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A Child of the Jago 


Arthur^^orrison 

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Author of 

“ TALKS OF MEAN STREETS ' 






CHICAGO 

HERBERT S. STONE ^ CO. 


MDCCCXCVI 




COPYRIGHT, 1 896, BY 
HERBERT S. STONE & CO. 


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TO 


ARTHUR OSBORNE JAY 

VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, SHOREDITCH 


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— Woe unto the foolish prophets, 
that follow their own spirit, and 
have seen nothing ! 

— Because, even because they 
have seduced my people, saying. 
Peace ; and there was no peace ; 
and one built up a wall, and lo, 
others daubed it with untempered 
mortar: 

Say unto them which daub it 
with untempered mortar that it 
shall fall: there shall be an 
overflowing shower ; and ye, O 
great hailstones, shall fall; and 
a stormy wind shall rend it, 

Lo, when the wall is fallen, 
shall it not be said unto you. 
Where is the daubing wherewith 
ye have daubed it ? 

— Ezekiel xiii, 3, xo-ia 




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A Child of the Jago 


I 

It was past the mid of a summer night 
in the old Jago. The narrow street was 
all the blacker for the lurid sky ; for there 
was a fire in a further part of Shoreditch, 
and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. 
Below, the hot, heavy air lay, a rank op- 
pression, on the contorted forms of those 
who made for sleep on the pavement : and 
in it, and through it all, there rose from 
foul earth and grimed walls a close, ming- 
led stink — the odour of the Jago. 

From where, off Shoreditch High Street, 
a narrow passage, set across with posts, gave 
menacing entrance on one end of Old 
Jago Street, to where the other end lost 

I 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

itself in the black beyond Jago Row ; from 
where Jago Row began south at Meakin 
Street, to where it ended north at Honey 
Lane ; there the Jago, for one hundred 
years the blackest pit in London, lay and 
festered ; and half way along Old Jago 
Street a narrow archway gave upon Jago 
Court, the blackest hole in all that pit. 

A square of two hi^deed and fifty yards 
or less — that was all there was of the 
Jago. But in that square the human pop- 
ulation swarmed in thousands. Old Jago 
Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago street 
lay parallel, east and west ; Jago Row at 
one end and Edge Lane at the other lay 
parallel also, stretching north and south : 
foul ways all. What was too vile for 
Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliff 
Highway in its worst d?.y, what was too 
useless, incapable and corrupt — all that 
teemed in the Old Jago. 

Old Jago Street lay black and close 
under the quivering red sky ; and slinking 
2 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

forms, as of great rats, followed one ano- 
ther quickly between the posts in the gut 
by the High Street, and scattered over the 
Jago. For the crowd about the fire was 
now small, the police was there in force, 
and every safe pocket had been tried. Soon 
the incursion ceased, and the sky, flicker- 
ing and brightening no longer, settled to a 
sullen flush. On the pavement some 
writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others, 
despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few 
talked. They were not there for lack or 
shelter, but because in this weather repose 
was less unlikely in the street than within 
doors; and the lodgings of the few who 
nevertheless abode at home were marked, 
here and there, by the lights visible from 
the windows. For in this place none ever 
slept without a light, because of three sorts 
of vermin that light in some sort keeps at 
bay : vermin which added to existence 
here a terror not to be guessed by the un- 
afflicted : who object to being told of it. 

3 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

For on them that lay writhen and gasping 
on the pavement ; on them that sat among 
them ; on them that rolled and blasphemed 
in the lighted rooms ; on every moving 
creature in this, the Old Jago, day and 
night, sleeping and waking, the third plague 
of Egypt, and more, lay unceasing. 

The stifling air took a further oppression 
from the red sky. By the dark entrance 
to Jago Court a man arose, flinging out an 
oath, and sat with his head bowed in his 
hands. 

“ Ah-h— h— h— he said. “ I wish I 
was dead : an* kep* a cawfy shop. He 
looked aside from his hands at his neigh- 
bours, but Kiddo Cook’s idea of heaven 
was no new thing, and the sole answer was 
a snort from a dozing man a yard away. 

Kiddo Cook felt in his pocket and pro- 
duced a pipe and a screw of paper. ‘‘ This 
is a bleed’n* unsocial sort o’ evenin’ party, 
this is,” he said. “ An’ ’ere ’s the on’y 
real toff in the mob with ’ardly ’arf a pipe- 


4 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

full left, an* no lights. D’ y’ ’ear, me 
lord’* — leaning toward the dozing neigh- 
bour — “got a match ?” 

“Got**ell!** 

“ O, wot ’orrid langwidge ! It ’s shock- 
in’, blimy. Arter that y* ought to find me 
a match. Come on.” 

“ Go t’ ’ell!” 

A lank, elderly man, who sat with his 
back to the wall, pushed up a battered tall 
hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of 
matches, exclaimed “ Hell ? And how 
far’s that? You’re in it!” He flung 
abroad a bony hand, and glanced upward. 
Over his forehead a greasy black curl dan- 
gled and shook, as he shuddered back 
against the wall. “ My God, there can be 
no hell after this ! ” 

“Ah,” Kiddo Cook remarked, as he 
lit his pipe in the hollow of his hands, 
“ that ’s a comfort, Mr. Beveridge, any 
’ow.” He returned the matches, and the 
old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent. 

5 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

A woman, gripping a shawl about her 
shoulders, came furtively along from the 
posts, with a man walking in her tracks — 
a little unsteadily. He was not of the 
Jago, but a decent young workman, by his 
dress. The sight took Kiddo Cook’s idle 
eye, and when the couple had passed, he 
said meditatively: “There’s Billy Leary 
in luck agin ; ’is missis do pick ’em up 
s’ ’elp me. I ’d carry the cosh meself if 
I ’d got a woman like ’er.” 

Cosh-carrying was near to being the 
major industry of the Jago. The cosh 
was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob 
at one end and a hook (or a ring) at the 
other. The craftsman, carrying it in his 
coat sleeve, waited about dark staircase 
corners till his wife (married or not) brought 
in a well-drunken stranger; when, with a 
sudden blow behind the head, the stranger 
was happily coshed, and whatever was 
found on him, as he lay insensible, was the 
profit on the transaction. In the hands of 
6 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

capable practitioners this industry yielded 
a comfortable subsistence for no great 
exertion. Most, of course, depended on 
the woman : whose duty it was to keep 
the other artist going in subjects. There 
were legends of surprising ingatherings 
achieved by wives of especial diligence : 
one of a woman who had brought to the 
cosh some six-and-twenty on a night or 
public rejoicing. This was, however, a 
story years old, and may have been no 
more than an exemplary fiction designed, 
like a Sunday School book, to convey a 
counsel of perfection to the dutiful ma- 
trons of the Old Jago. 

The man and woman vanished in a 
doorway near the Jago Row end, where, 
for some reason, dossers were fewer than 
about the portal of Jago Court. There 
conversation flagged, and a broken snore 
was heard. It was a quiet night, as quiet- 
ness was counted in the Jago; for it was 
too hot for most to fight in that stifling 


7 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

air — too hot to do more than turn on the 
stones and swear. Still, the last hoarse 
yelps of a combat of women came intermit- 
tently from Half Jago Street, in the further 
confines. 

In a little while something large and 
dark was pushed forth from the door- 
opening near Jago Row, which Billy 
Leary's spouse had entered. The thing 
rolled over and lay tumbled on the pave- 
ment, for a time unnoticed. It might have 
been yet another would-be sleeper, but for 
its stillness. Just such a thing it seemed, 
belike, to two that lifted their heads and 
peered from a few yards off, till they rose 
on hands and knees and crept to where it 
lay — Jago rats, both. A man it was ; 
with a thick smear across his face, and 
about his head the source of the dark trickle 
that sought the gutter deviously over the 
broken flags. The drab stuff of his pockets 
peeped out here and there in a crumpled 
bunch, and his waistcoat gaped where the 
8 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was 
an uncommonly remunerative cosh — a 
cosh so good that the boots had been neg- 
lected, and remained on the man’s feet. 
These the kneeling two unlaced deftly, 
and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the 
deeper shadow of Jago Row. 

A small boy, whom they met full tilt at 
the corner, staggered out to the gutter and 
flung a veteran curse after them. He was 
a slight child, by whose size you might 
have judged his age at five. But his face 
was of serious and troubled age. One 
who knew the children of the Jago, and 
could tell, might have held him eight, or 
from that to nine. 

He replaced his hands in his trousers 
pockets and trudged up the street. As he 
brushed by the coshed man he glanced again 
toward Jago Row, and, jerking his thumb 
that way, “ Done ’im for ’is boots,” he 
piped. But nobody marked him till he 
reached Jago Court, when old Beveridge, 


9 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

pushing back his hat once more, called 
sweetly and silkily, “ Dicky Perrott ! and 
beckoned with his finger. 

The boy approached, and as he did so 
the man’s skeleton hand suddenly shot out 
and gripped him by the collar. “ It-never- 
does-to-see-too-much ! ” Beveridge said, in 
a series of shouts, close to the boy’s ear. 
“ Now go home,” he added in a more or- 
dinary tone, with a push to make his 
meaning plain: and straightway relapsed 
against the wall. 

The boy scowled and backed off the 
pavement. His ragged jacket was coarsely 
made from one much larger, and he hitched 
the collar over his shoulder as he slunk 
toward a doorway some few yards on. 
Front doors were used merely as firewood 
in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt 
there many years ago. If, perchance, one 
could have been found still on its hinges it 
stood ever open, and probably would not 
shut. Thus at night the Jago doorways 

lO 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

were a row of black holes, foul and for" 
bidding. 

Dicky Perrott entered his hole with 
caution, for anywhere, in the passage and 
on the stairs, somebody might be lying 
drunk, against whom it would be unsafe 
to stumble. He found nobody, however, 
and climbed and reckoned his way up the 
first stair-flight with the necessary regard 
for the treads that one might step through 
and the rails that had gone from the side. 
Then he pushed open the door of the first- 
floor back and was at home. 

A little heap of guttering grease, not 
long ago a candle end, stood and spread on 
the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light 
from its drooping wick. A thin-railed 
iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood 
against a wall, and on its murky coverings 
a half-dressed woman sat and neglected a 
baby that lay by her grieving and wheezing. 
The woman had a long dolorous face, 
empty of expression and weak of mouth. 


II 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

“Where *a’ you bin, Dicky?” she 
asked, rather complaining than asking. 
“ It *s sich low hours for a boy.” 

Dicky glanced about the room. “ Got 
anythink to eat?” he asked. 

“ I dunno,” she answered listlessly. 
“P’raps there’s a bit o’ bread in the cup- 
board. I do n’t want nothin’, its so ’ot. 
An father ain’t been ’ome since tea-time.” 

The boy rummaged and found a crust. 
Gnawing at this he crossed to where the 
baby lay. “ ’Ullo, Looey,” he said, bend- 
ing and patting the muddy cheek. “ ’Ullo!” 

The baby turned feebly on its back, 
and set up a thin wail. Its eyes were 
large and bright, its tiny face was pite- 
ously flea-bitten and strangely old. “ Wy, 
she’s ’ungry, mother,” said Dicky Per- 
rott, and took the little thing up. 

He sat on a small box and rocked the 
baby on his knees, feeding it with morsels 
of chewed bread. The mother, dolefully 
inert, looked on and said : “ She ’s that 


12 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

backward I ’m quite wore out ; more *n 
ten months old an* don’t even crawl yut. 
It ’s a never-endin’ trouble, is children.” 

She sighed, and presently stretched her- 
self on the bed. The boy rose, and car- 
rying his little sister with care, for she was 
dozing, essayed to look through the grimy 
window. The dull flush still spread over- 
head, but Jago Court lay darkling below, 
with scarce a sign of the ruinous back yards 
that edged it on this and the opposite sides, 
and nothing but blackness between. 

The boy returned to his box, and sat. 
Then he said, “ I do n’t s’pose father ’s 
’avin’ a sleep outside, eh 

The woman sat up with some show of 
energy. ‘‘Wot?” she said sharply. “Sleep 
out in the street like them low Ranns an’ 
Learys ? I should ’ope not. It ’s bad 
enough livin’ ’ere at all an’ me being used 
to different things once, an’ all. You 
ain’t seen ’im outside ’ave ye ?” 

“ No, I ain’t seen ’im ; I jist looked in 


13 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

the court.” Then after a pause, “ I ’ope 
’e’s done a click,” the boy said. 

His mother winced. “ I dunno wot you 
mean, Dicky,” she said, but falteringly. 
“ You — you ’re gittin’ that low an’ an’ — ” 
Wy, copped somethink, o’ course. 
Nicked somethink. You know.” 

‘‘ If you say sich things as that I’ll tell 
’im wot you say, an’ ’e’ll pay you. We 
ain’t that sort o* people, Dicky, you ought 
to know. I was alwis kep* respectable 
an* straight all my life. I’m sure, an* — ** 

“ I know. You said so before, to father 
— I *eard : wen ’e brought *ome that 
there yuller prop — -the necktie pin. Wy, 
where did *e git that? ’E ain*t ’ad a job for 
munse an’ munse ; where ’s the yan- 
nups come from wot ’s bin for to pay 
the rent, an’ git the toke, an* milk for 
Looey ? Think I dunno ? I ain*t a kid ; 
I know.” 

“ Dicky, Dicky ! you must n*t say 
sich things ! *’ was all the mother could 




A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. 
“ It ’s wicked an* — an* low. An* you 
must alwis be respectable an* straight, 
Dicky, an* you’ll get on then.** 

“ Straight people *s fools, /reckon. Kiddo 
Cook says that, an* *e *s as wide as Broad 
Street. Wen I grow up I’m goin* to git 
toff’s doe’s an* be in the *igh mob. They 
does big clicks.” 

‘‘ They git put in a dark prison for 
years an* years, Dicky, — an* — an* if 
you *re sich a wicked low boy, father *11 
give you the strap — *ard,** the mother 
returned, with what earnestness she might. 
‘‘ Gimme the baby an* you go to bed ; go 
on, *fore father comes.” 

Dicky handed over the baby, whose 
wizen face was now relaxed in sleep, and 
slowly disencumbered himself of the un- 
gainly jacket, staring at the wall in a brown 
study. “ It’s the mugs wot git took,** he 
said, absently. “ An* quoddin ain’t so 
bad.” Then,after a pause, he turned and 


15 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

added suddenly : ‘‘ S’pose father ’ll be 

smugged some day, eh, mother ? ” 

His mother made no reply, but bent 
languidly over the baby with an indefinite 
pretence of settling it in a place on the 
bed. Soon Dicky himself, in the short 
and ragged shirt he had worn under the 
jacket, burrowed head first among the 
dingy coverings at the foot, and protruding 
his head at the further side took his ac- 
customed place crosswise at the extreme 
end. 

The filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits 
as the candle-wick fell and guttered to its 
end. He heard his mother rise and find 
another fragment of candle to light by its 
expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful. 
After a time he asked : “ Mother, why 
do n’t you come to bed ? ” 

“ Waiting for father. Go to sleep.” 
He was silent for a little. But brain 
and eyes were wide awake, and soon he 
spoke again. “Them noo ’uns in the 

i6 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

front room,” he said. “ Ain’t the man 
eive ’is wife a ’idin’yut ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Nor yut the boy — ’umpty- backed 
un?” 

“ No.” 

“ Seems they ’re mighty pertickler. 
Fancy theirselves too good for their neigh- 
bours ; I ’eard Pigeony Poll say that ; on’y 
Poll said” — 

“ You must n’t never listen to Pigeony 
Poll, Dicky. Ain’t you ’eard me say so ? 
Go to sleep. ’Ere comes father.” 

There was, indeed, a step on the stairs, 
but it passed the landing and went on to 
the top floor. Dicky lay awake, but silent, 
gazing upward and back through the dirty 
window just over his head. It was very 
hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably, fear- 
ing to turn or toss lest the baby should 
wake and cry. There came a change in the 
hue of the sky, and he watched the patch 
within his view, until the red seemed to 
»7 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

gather in spots and fade a spot at a time. 
Then at last there was a tread on the stairs 
that stayed at the door, and father had 
come home. Dicky lay still, and listened. 

“ Lor, Josh, where ye bin ? ” Dicky 
heard his mother say. ‘‘ 1 ’m almost wore 
out a-waitin*.” 

“Awright, awright” — this in a hoarse 
grunt, little above a whisper — “ Got any 
water up ’ere ? Wash this ’ere stick.” 

There was a pause, wherein Dicky 
knew his mother looked about her in 
vacant doubt as to whether or not water 
was in the room. Then a quick, under- 
toned scream, and the stick rattled heavily 
on the floor. “ It ’s sticky ! ” his mother 
said. “O, my Gawd, Josh, look at that — 
an’ bits o’ ’air, too ! ” The great shadow 
of an open hand shot up across the ceiling, 
and fell again. ‘‘ O, Josh! O, my Gawd! 
You ain’t, ’ave ye? Not — not — not 
that?” 


i8 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

“ Not wot ? Gawblimy, not wot ? 
Shutcher mouth. If a man fights you ’re 
got to fight back, ain’cher ? Anyone ’ud 
think it was a murder, to look at ye. I 
ain’t sich a damn fool as that. ’Ere, pull 
up that board.” 

Dicky knew the loose floor-board that 
was lifted with a slight groaning jar. It 
was to the right of the hearth, and he had 
shammed sleep when it had been lifted once 
before. His mother whimpered and cried 
quietly. ‘‘You ’ll git in trouble. Josh,” 
she said. “ I wish you ’d git a reg’lar job. 
Josh, like wot you used — I do — I do.” 

The board was shut down again. Dicky 
Perrott, through one opened eye, saw the 
sky, a pale grey above, and hoped the click 
had been a good one ; hoped also that it 
might bring bullock’s liver for dinner. 

. . . Out in the Jago the pale dawn 
brought a cooler air and the chance of sleep. 
From the paving of Old Jago Street sad 


19 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

grey faces, open-mouthed, looked upward 
as from the Valley of Dry Bones. Down 
by Jago Row the coshed subject, with the 
blood dry on his face, felt the colder air 
and moved a leg. 


30 


II 


Three quarters of a mile east of the 
Jago’s outermost limit was the East End 
Elevation Mission and Pansophical Insti- 
tute : such was the amazing success where- 
of, that a new wing had been built, and was 
now to be declared open by a Bishop of 
great eminence and industry. 

The triumphs of the East End Eleva- 
tion Mission and Pansophical Institute were 
known and appreciated far from East 
London, by people who knew less of 
that part than of Asia Minor. Indeed, 
they were chiefly appreciated by these. 
There were kept, perpetually on tap for 
the aspiring East Ender, the Higher Life, 
the Greater Thought, and the Wider Hu- 
manity: with other radiant abstractions, 
mostly in the comparative degree; specifics 
all for the manufacture of the Superior 


21 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Person. There were many Lectures given 
on still more subjects. Pictures were bor- 
rowed and shewn, with revelations to the 
Uninformed of the morals ingeniously con- 
cealed by the painters. The Uninformed 
were also encouraged to debate and to pro- 
duce papers on literary and political mat- 
ters, while still unencumbered with the 
smallest knowledge thereof : for the En- 
largement of the Understanding and the 
Embellishment of the Intellect. And 
there were classes, and clubs, and news- 
papers, and games of draughts, and mu- 
sical evenings, and a brass band, whereby 
the life of the Hopeless Poor might be 
coloured, and the Misery of the Sub- 
merged alleviated. The wretches who 
crowded to these benefits were trades- 
men’s sons, small shopkeepers and their 
families, and neat clerks, with here and 
there a smart young artisan of one of the 
especially respectable trades. They freely 
patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, 


22 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

the brass band, and the bagatelle board ; 
and those who took themselves seriously 
debated and Mutually -Improved with 
pomp. Others, subject to savage fits of 
wanting-to-know, made short rushes at 
random evening classes, with intervals of 
disgusted apathy. Altogether, a number 
of decently-dressed and mannerly young 
men passed many evenings at the Pan- 
sophical Institute in harmless pleasures, 
and often with an agreeable illusion of in- 
tellectual advance. 

Other young men, more fortunately cir- 
cumstanced, with the educational varnish 
fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, 
equipped with a foreign mode of thought 
and a proper ignorance of the world and 
the proportions of things, as Missionaries. 
Not without some anxiety to their parents, 
they plunged into the perilous deeps of the 
East End, to struggle — for a fortnight — 
with its suffering and its brutishness. So 
they went among the tradesmen’s sons 
‘23 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

and the shopmen, who endured them as 
they endured the nominal subscription; 
and they came away with a certain relief, 
and with some misgiving as to what im- 
pression they had made, and what they had 
done to make it. But it was with knowl- 
edge and authority that they went back 
among those who had doubted their per- 
sonal safety in the dark region. The East 
*< End, they reported, was nothing like what 
it was said to be. You could see much 
worse places up West. The people were 
quite a d^ent sort, in their way : shocking 
Bounders, of course, but quite clean and 
quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with 
ties and collars and watches. 

But the Missionaries were few, and the 
subscribers to the Elevation Mission were 
many. Most had been convinced, by 
what they had been told, by what they 
had read in charity appeals, and perhaps 
by what they had seen in police-court and 
inquest reports, that the whole East End 

34 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

was a wilderness of slums; slums packed 
with starving human organisms, without 
minds and without morals, preying on each 
other alive. These subscribers visited the 
Institute by twos and threes, on occasions 
of particular festivity among the neat clerks, 
and were astonished at the wonderful effects 
of Pansophic Elevation on the degraded 
classes, their aspect and their habits. Per- 
haps it was a concert where nobody was 
drunk; perhaps a little dance, where no- 
body howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, 
nor punched his partner in the eye. It was 
a great marvel, whereunto the observers 
testified : so that more subscriptions came, 
and the new wing was built. 

The afternoon was bright, and all was 
promising. A small crowd of idlers hung 
about the main door of the Institute and 
stared at a string of flags. Away to the 
left stood the new wing, a face of fair, 
clean brick; the ornamentation, of approved 
earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at regu- 

25 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

lar intervals. Within sat many friends 
and relations of the shopmen and superior 
mechanics, and waited for the Bishop, the 
Eminences of the Elevation Mission sit- 
ting apart on the platform. Without, among 
the idlers, waited Dicky Perrott. His no- 
tions of what was going on were indis- 
tinct; but he had a belief, imbibed through 
rumour and tradition, that all celebrations at 
such large buildings were accompanied by 
the consumption, in the innermost recesses, 
of cake and tea. Even to be near cake 
was something. In Shoreditch High Street 
was a shop where cake stood in the win- 
dow in great slabs, one slab over another, 
to an incalculable value. At this win- 
dow — against it, as near as possible, his 
face flattened white — Dickey would stand 
till the shop-keeper drove him off; till he 
had but to shut his eyes to see once more, 
in the shifting black, the rich yellow sec- 
tions with their myriad raisins. Once a 
careless errand boy, who had bought 
26 


a 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

slice, took so clumsy a bite as he emerged 
that near a third of the whole piece broke 
and fell; and this Dickey had snatched 
from the paving and bolted with ere 
the owner quite saw his loss. This was 
a superior sort of cake, at a penny. But 
once he had managed to buy himself a 
slice of an inferior sort for a half-penny in 
Meakin Street 

Dicky Perrott, these blessed memories 
in his brain, stood unobtrusively near the 
door, with the big jacket buttoned over as 
decently as might be, full of a desperate 
design : which was to get inside by what- 
soever manner of trick or opportunity he 
might, and so, if it were humanly possible, 
to the cake. 

The tickets were being taken at the 
door by an ardent young Elevator — one 
of the Missionaries. Him, and all such 
washed and well-dressed people, Dicky had 
learnt to hold in serene contempt when 
the business in hand was dodging. There 
27 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

was no hurry : the Elevator might waste 
his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some 
time yet ; and Dicky knew better than to 
betray the smallest sign of a desire for 
entrance while his enemy’s attention was 
awake. 

Carriages drew up, and yielded more 
Eminences : toward the end the Bishop 
himself, whom Dicky observed but as a 
pleasant-looking old gentleman in uncom- 
mon clothes ; and on whom he bestowed 
no more thought than a passing wonder at 
what might be the accident to his hat 
which had necessitated its repair with 
string. 

But at the spikes of the Bishop’s car- 
riage came another, and out of that there 
got three ladies, friends of the ticket re- 
ceiver, on whom they closed, greeting and 
shaking hands ; and in a flash Dicky Per- 
rott was beyond the lobby and moving 
obscurely along the walls of the inner hall^ 
behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake. 

38 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

The Choral Society sang their lustiest, 
and there were speeches. Eminences ex- 
pressed their surprise and delight at finding 
the people of the East End gathered in the 
Institute Building, so respectable and clean, 
thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish 
Elevation. 

The good Bishop, amid clapping of 
hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, piped 
cherubically of everything. He rejoiced 
to see that day, whereon the helping hand 
of the West was so unmistakably made 
apparent in the East. He rejoiced also to 
find himself in the midst of so admirably 
typical an assemblage — so representative, 
if he might say so, of that great East End 
of London, thirsting and crying out for — 
for Elevation; for that — ah — Elevation 
which the more fortunately circumstanced 
denizens of — of other places, had so munifi- 
cently — laid on. The people of the East 
End had been sadly misrepresented — in 
popular periodicals and in — in other ways. 


29 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

The East End, he was convinced, was not 
so black as it was painted (applause). He 
had but to look about him — et cetera, et 
cetera. He questioned whether so well- 
conducted, morally-given and respectable a 
gathering could be brought together in any 
West End parish with which he was ac- 
quainted. It was his most pleasant duty 
on this occasion — and so on and so forth. 

Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It 
was in a much smaller room at the back 
of the hall, wherein it was expected that 
the Bishop and certain Eminences of the 
platform would refresh themselves with 
tea after the ceremony. There were 
heavy drooping curtains at the door of 
this room, and deep from the largest folds 
the ratling from the Jago watched. The 
table was guarded by a sour-faced man — 
just such a man as drove him from the 
window of the cake-shop in Shoreditch 
High Street. Nobody else was there yet, 
and plainly the sour-faced man must be 
30 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

absent or busy ere the cake could be got at. 

There was a burst of applause in the 
hal4 the new wing had been declared open. 
Then there was more singing, and after 
that much shuffling and tramping, for every- 
body was free to survey the new rooms on 
the way out ; and the Importances from the 
platform came to find the tea. 

Filling the room and standing about in 
little groups ; chatting, munching and sip- 
ping, while the sour-faced man distractedly 
floundered amid crockery ; not a soul of 
them all perceived an inconsiderable small 
boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among 
legs and ’round skirts, making, from time to 
time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table ; 
and presently he vanished altogether. Then 
the amiable bishop, beaming over the tea- 
cup six inches from his chin, at two cour- 
tiers of the clergy, bethought him of a din- 
ner engagement, and passed his hand down= 
ward over the rotundity of his waistcoat. 

“ Dear, dear,” said the Bishop, glancing 


31 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

down suddenly, “ why — what *s become of 
my watch ? ” 

There hung three inches of black rib- 
bon, with a cut end. The bishop looked 
blankly at the Elevators about him. 

Three streets off, Dicky Perrott, with 
his shut fist deep in his breeches pocket, 
and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive 
for the Old Jago. 


33 


Ill 


There was nobody in chase j but Dicky 
Perrott, excited by his novel exploit, ran 
hard ; forgetting the lesson first learnt by 
every child of the Jago, to avoid, as far as 
may be, suspicious flight in open streets. 
He burst into the Old Jago from the Jago 
Row corner, by Meakin Street, and still 
he ran. A small boy a trifle bigger than 
himself made a sharp punch at him as he 
passed, but he took no heed. The hulk- 
ing group at the corner of Old Jago 
Street, ever observant of weaklings with 
plunder, saw him and one tried to catch 
his arm, but he had the wit to dodge. 
Past the Jago Court passage he scudded, 
in at the familiar doorway and up the 
stairs. A pale hunchbacked child, clean 
and wistful, descended and him Dicky 
33 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

flung aside and half downstairs with “Git 
out, ’ump!” 

Josh Perrott sat on the bed, eating fried 
fish from an oily paper ; for it was tea- 
time. He was a man of thirty-two, of 
middle height and stoutly built, with a 
hard, leathery face as of one much older. 
The hair about his mouth seemed always 
three days old — never much less nor 
much more. He was a plasterer — had, at 
least, so described himself at police-courts. 
But it was long since he had plastered, 
though he still walked abroad splashed 
and speckled, as though from an eruption 
of inherent plaster. In moments of pride 
he declared himself the only member of his 
family who had ever learned a trade and 
worked at it. It was a long relinquished 
habit, but while it lasted he had married a 
decent boilermaker’s daughter, who had 
known nothing of the Jago till these latter 
days. One other boast Josh Perrott had:, 
that nothing but shot or pointed steel could 
34 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

hurt him. And this, too, was near being 
a true boast ; as he had proved in more 
than one fight in the local arena — which 
was Jago Court. Now he sat peaceably 
on the edge of the bed and plucked with 
his fingers at the oily fish, while his wife 
grubbed hopelessly about the cupboard- 
shelves for the screw of paper which was 
the sugar-basin. 

Dicky entered at a burst. Mother — 
father — look ! I done a click! I got a 
clock — a red "un !” 

Josh Perrott stopped, jaw and hand, 
with a pinch of fish poised in air. The 
woman turned, and her chin fell. “O 
Dicky, Dicky,’* she cried, in real distress, 
‘‘you *re a awful low, wicked boy. My 
Gawd, Josh ’e — ’e ’ll grow up bad; I said 
so.” 

Josh Perrott bolted the pinch of fish, 
and sucked his fingers as he sprang to the 
door. After a quick glance down the 
stairs, he shut it and turned to Dicky. 

35 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

‘Where d’ je get that, ye young devel?” 
he asked, and snatched the watch. 

“Claimed it auf a ol’ bloke w*en ’e was 
drinkin* ’is tea,” Dicky replied with 
sparkling eyes. “ Let ’s ’ave a look at it, 
father.” 

“Did ’e run after ye?” 

“No — didn’t know nuffin about it. I 
cut ’is bit o’ ribbin with my knife.” Dicky 
held up a treasured relic of blade and han- 
dle found in a gutter. “Ain ’tcher goin* to 
let ’s ’ave a look at it ? ” 

Josh Perrott looked doubtfully toward 
his wife: the children were chiefly her 
concern. Of her sentiments there could 
be no mistake. He slipped the watch into 
his own pocket and caught Dicky by the 
collar. 

“I ’ll give you somethink, you dam 
young thief,” he exclaimed, slipping off his 
belt. “You’d like t’ ’ave us all in stir 
for a year or two, I s’pose; goin’ thievin’ 


36 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

watches like a growed-up man.” And he 
plied the belt savagely, while Dicky, 
amazed, breathless and choking, spun about 
him with piteous squeals, and the baby 
woke and puled in feeble sympathy. 

There was a rip, and the collar began 
to leave the old jacket. Feeling this. Josh 
Perrott released it and with a quick drive 
of the fist in the neck, sent Dicky stag- 
gering across the room. Dicky caught 
at the bed-frame, and limped out to the 
landing, sobbing grievously in the bend of 
his sleeve. 

It was more than his mother had in- 
tended but she knew better than to attempt 
interference. Now that he was gone she 
said, with some hesitation : “ *Ad n’t you 
better take it out at once. Josh?” 

“Yes, I *m goin’,” Josh replied, turning 
the watch in his hand. “ It ’s a good ’un — 
a topper.” 

“You — you won’t let Weech ’ave it, 
will ye. Josh ? ’E — ’e never gives much.” 

37 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

“No bloomin’ fear. Pm goin’ up ’Ox- 
ton wi’ this ’ere.” 

Dicky sobbed his way down the stairs 
and through the passage to the back. In 
the yard he looked for Tommy Rann to 
sympathise, but Tommy was not; and 
Dicky paused in his grief to reflect 
that perhaps, indeed, in the light of calm 
reason, he would rather cast the story of 
the watch in a more heroic mould for 
Tommy’s benefit than was compatible 
with tears and a belted back. So he 
turned and squeezed through a hole in 
the broken fence, sobbing again, in search 
of the friend that shared his inmost sor- 
rows. 

The belting was bad — very bad. There 
was broken skin on his shins where the 
strap had curled ’round, and there was a 
little sticky blood under the shirt half way 
up his back: to say nothing of bruises. 
But it was the hopeless injustice of things 
that shook him to the soul. Wholly un- 
38 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

aided, he had done, with neatness and 
credit, a click that anybody in the Jago 
would have been proud of. Overjoyed, 
he had hastened to receive the commenda- 
tions of his father and mother, and to place 
the prize in their hands, freely and gener- 
ously, though perhaps with some hope of 
hot supper by way of celebration. And 
his reward was this. Why ? He could 
understand nothing; could but feel the 
wrong that broke his heart. And so, 
sobbing, he crawled through two fences to 
weep on the shaggy neck of Jerry Gullen’s 
canary. 

Jerry Gullen’s canary was no bird, but 
a donkey ; employed by Jerry Gullen in 
his occasional intervals of sobriety to drag 
a cranky shallow, sometimes stored with 
glass bottles, rags, and hearthstone; some- 
times with firewood manufactured from a 
convenient hoarding, or from the joinery 
of an empty house ; sometimes with empty 
sacks covering miscellaneous property sud- 
39 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

denly acquired and not for general inspec- 
tion. His vacations, many and long, 
Jerry Gullen’s canary spent, forgotten and 
unfed, in Jerry Gullen’s backyard: gnaw- 
ing desperately at fences and harrowing 
the neighborhood with his brays. Thus 
the nickname, facetiously applied by Kiddo 
Cook in celebration of his piteous song, 
grew into use; and “Canary” would call 
the creature’s attention as readily as a 
mouthful of imprecations. 

Jerry Gullen’s canary was gnawing, 
gnawing, with a sound as of a crooked 
centre-bit. Everywhere about the foul 
yard, ten or twelve feet square, wood was 
rounded and splintered and bitten white, 
and, as the donkey turned his heavy head, 
a drip of blood from his gums made a disc 
on the stones. A twitch of the ears wel- 
comed Dicky, grief-stricken as he was ; 
for it was commonly thus that he bethought 
him of solace in Jerry Gullen’s backyard. 


40 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

And so Dicky, his arms about the mangy 
neck, told the tale of his wrongs till con- 
solation came in composition of the heroic 
narrative designed for Tommy Rann. 

“ O, Canary, it is a blasted shame ! ” 


4 * 


IV 


When Dicky Perrott came running into 
Jago Row with the Bishop’s watch in his 
pocket, another boy punched a fist at him, 
and at the time Dicky was at a loss to 
guess the cause — unless it were a simple 
caprice — but stayed neither to enquire nor 
to retaliate. The fact was that the Ranns 
and the Learys were coming out, fighting 
was in the air, and the small boy, meeting 
another a trifle smaller, punched on general 
principles. The Ranns and the Learys, 
ever at war or in guarded armistice, were 
the great rival families — the Montagues 
and the Capulets — of the Old Jago. 
The Learys, indeed, scarce pretended to 
rivalry — rather to factious opposition. For 
the Ranns gloried in the style and title of 
the “ Royal Family.” and dominated the 


42 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Jago ; but there were mighty fighters, men 
and women, among the Learys, and when 
a combat arose it was a hard one and 
an animated. The two families ramified 
throughout the Jago, and under the Rann 
standard, whether by kin or by custom, 
were the Gullens, the Fishers, the Spicers, 
and the Walshes; while in the Leary train 
came Dawsons, Greens, and Harnwells. 
So that near all the Jago was wont to be 
on one side or the other, and any of the 
Jago which was not was apt to be the 
worse for it, for the Ranns drubbed all 
them that were not of their faction in the 
most thorough and most workmanlike man- 
ner, and the Learys held by the same 
practice ; so that neutrality meant double 
drubbing. But when the Ranns and Learys 
combined, and the Old Jago issued forth 
in its entire might against Dove Lane, then 
the battle was one to go miles to see. 

This, however, was but a Rann and 
Leary fight; and it was but in its early stages 
43 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

when Dicky Perrott, emerging from Jerry 
Gullen’s back yard, made for Shoreditch 
High Street by way of the ‘‘ Posties — 
the passage with posts at the end of Old 
Jago Street. His purpose was to snatch a 
handful of hay from some passing wagon, 
or of mixed fodder from some unguarded 
nosebag, wherewith to reward the sympa- 
thy of Jerry Gullen’s canary. But by 
the “ Posties,’* at the Edge Lane corner. 
Tommy Rann, capless and with a purple 
bump on his forehead, came flying into his 
arms, breathless, exultant, a babbling brag- 
gart. He had fought Johnny Leary and 
Joe Dawson, he said, one after the other, 
and pretty nigh broke Johnny Leary’s 
blasted neck; and Joe Dawson’s big 
brother was after him now with a bleed’n’ 
shovel. So the two children ran on to- 
gether and sought the seclusion of their 
own back yard, where the story of Tommy 
Rann’s prowess, with scowls and the 
pounding of imaginary foes, and the story 
44 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

of the Bishop’s watch, with suppressions 
and improvements, mingled and contended 
in the thickening dusk; and Jerry Gullen’s 
canary went forgotten and unrequited. 

That night fighting was sporadic and de- 
sultory in the Jago. Bob the Bender was 
reported to have a smashed nose, and Sam 
Cash had his head bandaged at the hospital. 
At the Bag of Nails in Edge Lane, Snob 
Spicer was knocked out of knowledge with 
a quart pot, and Cocko Harnwell’s missis 
had a piece bitten off of one ear. As the 
night wore on, taunts and defiances were 
bandied from window to door and from door 
to window, between those who intended to 
begin fighting to-morrow ; and shouts from 
divers corners gave notice of isolated scuf- 
fles. Once a succession of piercing screams 
seemed to betoken that Sally Green had be- 
gun. There was a note in the screams of 
Sally Green’s opposites which the Jago had 
learned to recognize. Sally Green, though 
of the weaker faction, was the female cham- 


45 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

pion of the Old Jago:an eminence won 
and kept by fighting tactics peculiar to her- 
self. For it was her way, reserving teeth 
and nails, to wrestle closely with her antag- 
onist, throw her by a dexterous twist on 
her face, and fall on her, instantly seizing 
the victim’s nape in her teeth, gnawing and 
worrying. The sufferer’s screams were 
audible afar, and beyond their invariable 
eccentricity of quality — a quality vaguely 
suggestive of dire surprise — they had a 
mechanical persistence, a pumplike regu- 
larity, that distinguished them, in the accus- 
tomed ear, from other screams. 

Josh Perrott had not been home all the 
evening ; probably the Bishop’s watch was 
in course of transmutation into beer. 
Dicky, stiff and domestically inclined, 
nursed Looey and listened to the noises 
without till he fell asleep, in hopeful antici- 
pation of the morrow. For Tommy Rann 
had promised him half of a broken iron 
railing wherewith to fight the Learys. 

46 


V 

Sleep in the Jago was at best a thing of 
intermission, for reasons — reasons of mul- 
titude — already denoted; nevertheless, 
Dicky slept well enough to be unconscious 
of his father’s home-coming. In the morn- 
ing, however, there lay Josh Perrott, snor- 
ing thunderously on the floor, pie-bald 
with road-dust. This was not a morning 
whereon father would want breakfast, it 
was plain ; he would wake thirsty and sav- 
age. So Dicky made sure of a crust from 
the cupboard and betook himself in search 
of Tommy Rann. As to washing, he was 
never especially fond of it, and in any case 
there were fifty excellent excuses for neg- 
lect. The only water was that from the 
little tap in the back yard. The little tap 
47 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

was usually out of order or had been 
stolen bodily by a tenant, and if it were 
not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, 
nor towel j and anything savouring of 
moderate cleanliness was resented in the 
Jago as an assumption of superiority. 

Fighting began early, fast and furious. 
The Ranns got together soon, and hunted 
the Learys up and down, and attacked them 
in their houses, the Learys* chances only 
coming when straggling Ranns were cut 
off from the main body. The weapons in 
use, as was customary, rose in effective- 
ness by a swiftly ascending scale. The 
Learys, assailed with sticks, replied with 
sticks, torn from old packing-cases, with 
protruding nails. The two sides bethought 
them of coshes simultaneously, and such 
as had no coshes — very few — had pokers 
and iron railings. Ginger Stagg, at bay in 
his passage, laid open Pud Palmer’s cheek 
with a chisel; and knives thus happily 
legitimised, with the least possible prelimi- 

48 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

nary form, everybody was free to lay hold 
of whatever came handy. 

In Old Jago Street, half-way between 
Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the 
Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the 
four public-houses in the Jago. Into the 
Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, 
and for a while they held the inner bar 
and the tap-room against the Ranns, who 
swarmed after them, chairs, bottles and 
pewter pots flying thick, while Mother 
Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on 
the beer pulls in the bar, supplicating and 
blubbering aloud. Then a partition came 
down with a crash, bringing shelves and 
many glasses with it, and the Ranns 
rushed over the ruin, beating the Learys 
down, jumping on them, heaving them 
through the back windows. Having thus 
cleared the house of the intruding enemy, 
the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, 
and took it, dragging handles ofF beer en- 
gines, seizing bottles, breaking into the 
49 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

cellar and driving in bungs. Nobody 
better than Mother Gapp could quell an 
ordinary bar riot, even to knocking a man 
down with a pot, but she knew better 
than to attempt interference now. Noth- 
ing could have made her swoon but she 
sat limp and helpless, weeping and blas- 
pheming. 

The Ranns cleared off, every man with 
a bottle or so, and scattered, and this for 
awhile was their undoing. For the Learys 
rallied and hunted the Ranns in their turn; 
a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping 
the Jago from Honey Lane to Meakin 
Street. Then they swung back through 
Edge Lane to Old Jago Street and made 
for Jerry Gullen’s — a house full of Ranns. 
Jerry Gullen, Bill Rann and the rest took 
refuge in the upper floors and barricaded 
the stairs. Below, the Learys broke win- 
dows and ravaged the rooms, smashing 
whatsoever of furniture was to be found. 
Above, Pip Walsh, who affected horticul- 
50 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ture on his window-sill, hurled down flower 
pots. On the stairs, Billy Leary, scaling 
the barricade, was flung from top to bot- 
tom, and had to be carried home. And 
then Pip Walsh’s missis scattered the be- 
siegers on the pavement below with a ket- 
tle-full of boiling water. 

There was a sudden sortie of Ranns 
from Jago Court, but it profited nothing : 
for the party was small, and, its advent 
being unexpected, there was a lack of 
prompt co-operation from the house. The 
Learys held the field. 

Down the middle of Old Jago Street 
came Sally Green: red-faced, stripped to 
the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. 
Nail-scores wide as the finger striped her 
back, her face, and her throat, and she had 
a black eye ; but in one great hand she 
dangled a long bunch of clotted hair, as 
she whooped defiance to the Jago. It was 
a trophy newly rent from the scalp of 
Norah Walsh, chnmpioji of the Rann 
SI 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

womankind, who had crawled away to hide 
her blighted head, and be restored with 
gin. None answered Sally’s challenge, 
and, staying but to fling a brickbat at Pip 
Walsh’s window, she carried her dance 
and her trophy into Edge Lane. 

The scrimmage on Jerry Gullen’s stairs 
was thundering anew, and parties of Learys 
were making for other houses in the street, 
when there came a volley of yells from 
Jago Row, heralding a scudding mob of 
Ranns. The defeated sortie-party from 
Jago Court, driven back, had gained New 
Jago Street by way of the house passages 
behind the court and set to gathering the 
scattered faction. Now the Ranns came, 
drunk, semi-drunk and otherwise, and the 
Learys, leaving Jerry Gullen’s, rushed to 
meet them. There was a great shock, 
hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden 
rattle, and instantly the two mobs were 
broken into an uproarious confusion of 
tangled groups, howling and grappling. 


5 ^ 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Here a man crawled into a passage to 
nurse a broken head ; there a knot gathered 
to kick a sprawling foe. So the fight 
thinned out and spread, resolving into 
many independent combats with concerted 
rushes of less and less frequency, till once 
again all through the Jago each fought for 
his own hand. Kiddo Cook, joker always, 
ran hilariously through the streets, brand- 
ishing a long roll of twisted paper, where- 
with he smacked the heads of Learys all 
and sundry, who realised too late that the 
paper was twisted round a lodging-house 
poker. 

Now, of the few neutral Jagos, most 
lay low. Josh Perrott, however, hard as 
nails and respected for it, feared neither 
Rann nor Leary, and leaving a little money 
with his missis, carried his morning mouth 
in search of beer. Pigeony Poll, harlot 
and outcast, despised for that she neither 
fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a re- 
spectable married woman, slunk and 


53 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

trembled in corners and yards and wept at 
the sight of bleeding heads. As for old 
Beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him 
that he neglected business (he cadged and 
wrote begging screeves) and stayed in the 
Jago; where he strode wildly about the 
streets, lank and rusty, stabbing the air 
with a carving knife, and incoherently de- 
fying “ all the lot ” to come near him. 
Nobody did. 

Dicky Perrott and Tommy Rann found a 
snug fastness in Jago Row. For there was 
a fence with a loose board, which, pushed 
aside, revealed a hole wbere-through a very 
small boy might squeeze ; and within 
were stored many barrows and shallows, 
mostly broken, and of these one, tilted 
forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, 
screened about with fence and barrows. 
Here they hid while the Learys swept the 
Jago, and hence they issued from time to 
time to pound such youngsters of the ether 
side as might come in sight. The bits of 
54 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

iron railing made imposing weapons, but 
were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid 
use in their puny hands. Still, Dicky 
managed to double up little Billy Leary 
with a timely lunge in the stomach, and 
Tommy Rann made Bobby Harnwell’s 
nose bleed very satisfactorily. On the 
other hand, the bump on Tommy Rann’s 
forehead was widened by the visitation of 
a stick, and Dicky Perrott sustained a very 
hopeful punch in the eye, which he cher- 
ished enthusiastically, with a view to an 
honourable blackness. In the snuggery 
intervals they explained their prowess one 
to another, and Dicky alluded to his in- 
tention, when he was a man, to buy a very 
long sword wherewith to cutoff the Leary’s 
heads; Tommy Rann inclining, however, 
to a gun, with which one might also shoot 
birds. 

The battle flagged a little toward mid- 
day, but waxed lively again as the after- 
noon began. It was then that Dicky Per- 
55 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

rott, venturing some way from the retreat, 
found himself in a scrimmage, and a man 
snatched away his piece of iron and floored 
a Leary with it. Gratifying as was the 
distinction of aiding in the exploit, Dicky 
mourned the loss of the weapon, almost 
unto tears ; and Tommy Rann would 
not go turn about with the other, but kept 
it wholly for himself : so Dicky was fain 
sorrowfully to hunt for a mere stick. 
Even a disengaged stick was not easy to 
find just then. So Dicky, emerging from 
the Jago, tried Meakin Street, where 
there were shops, but unsuccessfully ; and 
so came round by Luck Row, a narrow 
way from Meakin Street, by Walker’s 
cook-shop, up through the Jago. 

Dicky’s mother, left with the baby, 
fastened the door as well as she might, 
and trembled. Indeed she had reason. 
The time of Josh Perrott’s return was a 
matter of doubt, but when he did come he 
56 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

would want something to eat ; it was for 
that he had left the money. But Dicky 
was out and there was nothing iu the cup- 
board, From the windows she saw divers 
fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for 
near two hours on the stones with a cut 
on his temple. As for herself, she was no 
favorite in the neighbourhood at any time. 
For one thing, her husband did not carry 
the cosh. Then she was an alien who 
had never entirely fallen into Jago ways; 
she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but 
she was never drunk, she never quarrelled, 
she did not gossip freely. Also her husband 
beat her but rarely, and then not with a 
chair or a poker. Justly irritated by such 
superiorities as these, the women of the 
Jago were ill disposed to brook another; 
which was that Hannah Perrott had been 
married in church. For these reasons she 
was timid at the most peaceful of times, 
but now, with Ranns and Learys on the 
war-path, and herself obnoxious to both, 
57 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

she trembled. She wished Dicky would 
come and do her errand. But there was 
no sign of him, and mid-day wore into 
afternoon. It was late for Josh as it was, 
and he would be sure to come home irri- 
table — it was his way when a bad head 
from overnight struggled with morning 
beer. If he found nothing to eat there 
would be trouble. 

At length she resolved to go herself. 
There was a lull in the outer din, and 
what there was seemed to come from the 
further parts of Honey Lane and Jago 
Row. She would slip across by Luck 
Row to Meakin Street, and be back in 
five minutes. She took up little Looey, 
went. 

As Dicky, stickless, turned into Luck 
Row, there arose a loud shriek and then 
another, and then, in a changed voice 
a succession of long screams, with a 
regular breath- pause. Sally Green again ! 
58 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

I 

He ran, turned into Old Jago Street, and 
saw. 

Sprawled on her face in the vile road- 
way lay a writhing woman and screamed, 
while squeezed under her arm was a baby 
with mud in its eyes and a cut cheek, cry- 
ing weakly; and spread over all, clutching 
her prey by hair and wrist, Sally Green 
hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws 
clenched, head shaking. 

Thus Dicky saw it in a flash, and in an 
instant he had flung himself on Sally 
Green, kicking, striking, biting and cry- 
ing, for he had seen his mother and 
Looey. The kicks wasted themselves 
among the woman’s petticoats and the 
blows were feeble, but the sharp teeth 
were meeting in the shoulder-flesh when 
help came. 

Norah Walsh, vanquished champion, 
now somewhat recovered, looked from a 
window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and 
ran out, armed with a bottle. She stopped 


59 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

at the kerb to knock the bottom off the 
bottle, and then with an exultant shout 
seized Sally Green by the hair and stabbed 
her about the face with the jagged points. 
Blinded with blood, Sally released her hold 
on Mrs. Perrott and rolled on her back, 
struggling fiercely; but to no end, for 
Norah Walsh, kneeling on her breast, 
stabbed and stabbed again, till pieces of 
the bottle broke away. Sally’s yells and 
plunges ceased, and a man pulled Norah 
off. On him she turned, and he was fain 
to run, while certain Learys found a truck 
which might carry Sally to the hospital. 

Hannah Perrott was gone indoors, hys- 
terical and helpless. She had scarce crossed 
the street on her errand when she had met 
Sally Green, in quest of female Ranns. 
Mrs. Perrott was not a Rann, but she 
was not a Leary, so it came to the same 
thing. Moreover, there was her general 
obnoxiousness. She had tried to run, 
but that was useless ; and now, sobbing 
6o 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

and bleeding, she was merely conscious of 
being gently led — almost carried — indoors 
and upstairs. She was laid back on the 
bed, and somebody loosened her hair and 
wiped her face and neck, giving her hoarse, 
comforting words. Then she saw the face 
— scared though coarse and pitted, and red 
about the eyes — that bent over her. It 
was Pigeony Poll’s. 

Dicky had followed her in, no longer 
the hero of the Jago Row retreat, but his 
face tearful and distorted, carrying the 
baby in his arms and wiping the mud from 
her eyes. Now he sat on the little box 
and continued his ministrations, with fear 
in his looks, as he glanced at his mother 
on the bed. 

Without, the light rallied once more. 
The Learys ran to avenge Sally Green, 
and the Ranns to meet them with a will. 
Down by the bag of Nails a party of 
Ranns were driven between the posts and 


6i 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

through the gut into Shoreditch High 
Street, where a stand was made until Fag 
Dawson dropped with a shoemaker’s knife 
sticking under his armpit. Then the 
Ranns left, with most of the Learys after 
them, and Fag Dawson was carried to a 
chemist’s by the police, never to floor a 
Rann again. For he was chived in the 
left lung. 

Thus the fight ended. For a faction 
fight in the Jago, with a few broken heads 
and ribs and an odd knife wound here and 
there — even with a death in the hospital 
from kicks or what not — was all very well; 
but when it came to homicide in the open 
High Street the police drew the line and 
entered the Jago in force. Ordinarily, a 
peep between the “ Posties ” was all the 
supervision the Jago had, although three 
policemen had been seen to walk the length 
of Old Jago Street together; and theer 
were raids in force for special captures. 

62 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Inhere was a raid in force now, and the tur- 
moil ceased. Nothing would have pleased 
both Ranns and Learys better than to 
knock over two or three policemen, for 
kicking practice; but there were too many 
for the sport, and for hours they patrolled 
the Jago’s closest passages. Of course 
nobody knew who chived Fag Dawson. 
No enquiring policeman ever found any- 
body in the Old Jago who knew anything, 
even to the harm of his bitterest foe. It 
was the sole commandment that ran there: 
‘‘ Thou shalt not nark.” 

That night it was known that there 
would be a fight between Josh Perrott and 
Billy Leary, once the latter grew well. 
For Josh Perrott came home, saw his 
wife, and turned Rann on the spot. But 
for the police in the Jago that night, 
there would have been many a sore head, 
if no worse, among the Learys by visita- 
tion of Josh Perrott. Sally Green’s hus- 
band had fled years ago, and Billy Leary, 
63 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

her brother, was the obvious mark for 
Josh’s vengeance. He was near as emi- 
nent a fighter among the men as his sister 
among the women, and a charming scrap 
was anticipated. It would come off, of 
course, in Jago Court one Sunday morn- 
ing, as all fights of distinction did, and 
perhaps somebody in the High Mob would 
put up stakes. 


VI 


In the morning the police still held the 
Jago. Their presence embarrassed many, 
but none more than Dicky Perrott, who 
would always take a turning, or walk the 
other way, at sight of a policeman. Dicky 
got out of Old Jago Street early, and be- 
took him to Meakin Street, where there 
were chandler’s shops with sugar in their 
windows, and cook-shops with pudding. 
He designed working through by these to 
Shoreditch High Street, there to crown his 
solace by contemplation of the cake-shop. 
But, as he neared Weecb’s colFee-shop, 
scarce half through Meakin Street, there 
stood Weech himself at the door, grinning 
and nodding affably, and beckoning him. 
He was a pleasant man, this Mr. Aaron 
Weech, who sang hymns aloud in the 
6S 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

back-parlour and hummed the tunes in the 
shop. A prosperous, white-aproned, whis- 
kered, half-bald, smirking tradesman, who 
bent and spoke amiably to boys, looking 
sharply in their eyes, but talked to a man 
mostly with his gaze on the man’s waist- 
coat. 

Indeed, there seemed to be something 
about Mr. Aaron Weech especially at- 
tractive to youth. Nearly all his custom- 
ers were boys and girls, though not boys 
and girls who looked likely to pay a 
great deal in the way of refreshment, much 
as they took. But he was ever indulgent 
and at all times accessible to his young 
clients. Even on Sunday (though, of 
course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on 
the Day of Rest) a particular tap would 
bring him hot-foot to the door ; not to sell 
coffee, for Mr. Weech was no Sabbath- 
breaker. 

Now he stood at his door, and invited 
Dicky with nods and becks. Dicky, all 
66 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

wondering, and alert to dodge in case the 
thing were a mere device to bring him 
within striking distance, went. 

‘‘ W’y, Dicky Perrott,” quoth Mr. 
Weech in a tone of genial surprise, “ I 
b’lieve you could drink a cup o* cawfy ! ” 

Dicky, wondering how Mr. Weech had 
learnt his name, believed he could. 

‘‘An’ eat a slice o’ cake, too, I ’ll be 
bound,” Mr. Weech added. 

Dicky’s glance leapt. Yes, he could 
eat a slice of cake, too. 

“Ah, I knew it,” said Mr. Weech, tri- 
umphantly ; “ I can always tell.” He 
rubbed Dicky’s cap about his head and 
drew him into the shop, at this hour bare 
of customers. At the innermost compart- 
ment they stopped, and Mr. Weech, with 
a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated 
Dicky at the table. 

He brought the coffee, and not a single 
slice of cake, but two. True, it was not 
cake of Elevation Mission quality, nor was 
67 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

it so good as that shown at the shop in 
High Street; it was of a browner, dumpier, 
harder nature, and the currants were gritty 
and few. But cake it was, and to con- 
sider it critically were unworthy. Dicky 
bolted it with less comfort than he might, 
for Mr. Weech watched him keenly across 
the table. And, indeed, from some queer 
cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. It 
was the first time that he had ever been 
given anything, kindly and ungrudgingly. 

He swallowed the last crumb, washed it 
down with the dregs of his cup, and looked 
sheepishly across at Mr. Weech. 

“ Goes down awright, do n*t it ?” that 
benefactor remarked. “Ah, I like to see 
you enjoyin’ of yerself. I ’m very fond o’ 
you young ’uns, ’specially clever ’uns like 
you.” 

Dicky had never been called clever be- 
fore, so far as he could recollect, and he 
wondered at it now. Mr. Weech, leaning 
back, contemplated him smilingly for some 
68 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

seconds, and then proceeded. “Yus,** he 
said, “ you *re the sort o* boy as can *ave 
cawfy an* cake w*enever you want it, you 
are.** 

Dicky wondered more, and his face said 
as much. “ You know,*’ Mr. Weech pur- 
sued, winking amain, grinning and nodding, 
“ that was a fine watch you found the other 
day. Y* ought to *a* brought it to me.’* 

Dicky was alarmed. How did Mr. 
Weech learn about the watch? Perhaps 
he was a friend of the funny old man who 
lost it. Dicky half rose, but his affable 
patron leaned across and pushed him back 
on the seat. “ You need n’t be frightened,** 
he said. “ I ain’t goin* to say nothink to 
nobody. But I know all about it, mind, 
an* I could if I liked. You found the 
watch, an* it was a red *un, on a bit o’ rib- 
bin. Well, then you went an* took it *ome, 
like a little fool. Wot does yer father do? 
W*y, *e ups an* lathers you with *is belt, 
an* *e keeps the watch *isself. That *s all 
69 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

you git for yer pains. See — I know all 
about it.” And Mr. Weech gazed on 
Dicky Perrott with a fixed grin. 

“ Oo toldjer ?” Dicky managed to ask 
at last. 

Ah !” — this with a great emphasis 
and a tapping of the forefinger beside the 
nose — “I don’t want much tellin’: it 
ain’t much as goes on ’ereabout I do n’t 
know of. Never mind ’ow. P’raps I 
got a little bird as w’ispers — p’raps I do 
it some other way. Any’ow I know. It 
ain’t no good any boy tryin’ to do some- 
think unbeknownst to me, mind jer.” 

Mr. Weech’s head lay aside, his grin 
widened, his glance was sidelong, his fore- 
finger pointed from his temple over 
Dicky’s head, and altogether he looked so 
very knowing that Dicky shuffled in his 
seat. By what mysterious means was 
this new found friend so well informed ? 
The doubt troubled him, for Dicky knew 
nothing of Mr. Aaron Weech’s con- 
70 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

versation an hour before with Tommy 
Rann. 

“ But it ’s awright, bless yer,” Mr. 
Weech went on presently. “Nobody’s 
none the wuss for me knowin* about ’em. 

Well, we was a-talkin’ about 
the watch, was n’t we All you got, 
after sich a lot o’ trouble, was a woppin’ 
with a belt. That was too bad.” A4r. 
Weech’s voice was piteous and sym- 
pathetic. “ After you a-findin* sich a 
nice watch — a red ’un an* all — you gits 
nothink for yerself but a beltin’. Never 
mind ; you ’ll do better next time — I ’ll 
take care o’ that. I do n ’t like to see a 
clever boy put upon. You go an’ find an- 
other, or somethink else — any think good 
— and then you bring it ’ere.” 

Mr. Weech’s friendly sympathy extin- 
guished Dicky’s doubt. “ I did n *t find 
it,” he said, shy but proud. “ It was a 
click — I sneaked it.” 

“ Eh ?” ejaculated Mr. Weech, a sud- 

71 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

den picture of blank incomprehension. 
“ Eh ? What Click ? — wot’s a click ? 
Sneaked ? Wot’s that I dunno nothink 
about no talk o* that sort, an I do n’t want 
to. It’s my belief it means somethink 
wrong — but I dunno, an’ I do n’t want to. 
’Ear that ? Eh ? Do n’t let me ’ave no 
more o’ that, or you ’d better not come 
near me agin. If you find somethink — 
awright, you come to me and I ’ll give 
ye somethink for it, if it ’s any good. It 
ain’t no business of anybody’s- where you 
find it, o’ course, an’ I do n’t want to 
know. But clicks and sneaks — them ’s 
Greek to me, an’ I do n’t want to learn 
’em. Unnerstand that ? Nice talk to 
respectable people, with yer clicks an’ 
sneaks !” 

Dicky blushed a little, and felt very 
guilty without in the least understanding 
the offense. But Mr. Weech’s virtuous 
indignation subsided as quickly as it had 
arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever. 

73 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

“ When you find anythink,” he said, 
“ jist like you found that watch, do n’t tell 
nobody an’ don’t let nobody see it. Bring 
it ’ere quiet, when there ain’t any p’lice- 
man in the street, an’ come right through 
to the back o’ the shop, an’ say, ‘ I come 
to clean the knives.’ Unnerstand? ‘I 
come to clean the knives.’ There ain’t no 
knives to clean — it ’s on’y a way o’ tellin’ 
me you got somethink without other peo- 
ple knowin.’ An’ then I ’ll give you 
somethink for it — money p’raps, some- 
times, or p’raps cake or wot not. Do n’t 
forget. ‘ I come to clean the knives.’ 
See ? ” 

Yes, Dicky understood perfectly ; and 
Dicky saw a new world of dazzling de- 
lights. Cake — limitless cake, coffee, and 
the like, whenever he might feel moved 
thereunto; but more than all, money — 
actual money ; good broad pennies, per- 
haps whole shillings — perhaps even more 
still ; money to buy bullock’s liver for 
73 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied; 
saveloys, baked potatoes from the can on 
cold nights, a little cart to wheel Looey in, 
a boat from a toy-shop with sails. 

“There *s no end o* things to be found, 
all over the place, an* a sharp boy like you 
can find ’em every day. If you do n’t find 
’em, someone else will; there’s plenty on 
’em about, on the look-out, an’ you got 
jist as much right as them. On’y mind ! ” 
— Mr. Weech was suddenly stern and 
serious, and his forefinger was raised im- 
pressively — Y ou know you can ’t do any- 
think without I know, an’ if you say a 
word — if you say a word,” his fist came 
on the table with a bang, “somethink ’ll 
'appen to you, somethink bad.” 

Mr. Weech rose, and was pleasant again 
though businesslike. “ Now you just go 
an’ find somethink,” he said. “Look 
sharp about it, an’ do n’t go an’ git in 
trouble. The cawfy ’s a penny an’ the 
cake ’s a penny — ought prop’ly to be two- 
74 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

pence, but say a penny this time — that’s 
twopence you owe me, an* you better bring 
me somethink an* pay it off quick ; so go 
along.” 

This was an unforeseen tag to the en- 
tertainment. For the first time in his life 
Dicky was in debt. It was a little disap 
pointing to find the coffee and cake no gift 
after all, though, indeed, it now seemed 
foolish to have supposed they were ; for in 
Dicky Perrott’s world people did not give 
things away — that were the act of a fool. 
Thus Dicky, with his hands in his broken 
pockets, and thought in his small face, 
whereon still stood the muddy streaks of 
yesterday’s tears, trudged out of Mr. 
Aaron Weech’s shop-door, and along 
Meakin Street. 

Now he was beginning the world seri- 
ously, and must face the fact. Truly, the 
world had been serious enough for him 
hitherto, but that he knew not. Now 
he was of an age when most boys were 
75 


A CHILD OF THE JAGG 

thieving for themselves, and he owed 
money like a man. True it was, as Mr. 
Weech had said, that everybody — the 
whole Jago — was on the lookout for 
himself. Plainly, he must take his share, 
lest it fall to others. As to the old 
gentleman’s watch, he had but been before- 
hand. Through foolish ingenuousness he 
had lost it, and his father had got it, who 
could so much more easily steal one for 
himself; for he was a strong man, and had 
but to knock over another man at any 
night-time. Nobody should hear of future 
clicks but Mr. Weech; each for himself. 
Come, he must open his eyes. 


76 


VII 


There was no chance all along Meakin 
Street. The chandlers and the keepers 
of cookshops knew their neighbourhood 
too well to leave articles unguarded. Soon 
Dickey reached Shoreditch High Street. 
There things were a little more favourable. 
There were shops, as he well remembered, 
where goods were sometimes exhibited at 
the doors and outside the windows ; but 
to-day there seemed to be no chance of 
the sort. As for the people, he was too 
short to try pockets, and, indeed, the High 
Street rarely gave passage to a more un- 
promising lot. Moreover, from robbery 
from the person he knew he must abstain, 
except for such uncommon opportunities 
as that of the Bishop’s watch, for some 
years yet. 


77 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

He hung about the doors and windows 
of shop after shop, hoping for a temporary 
absence of the shopkeeper which might 
leave something snatchable, but he hoped 
in vain. From most shops he was driven 
away, for the Shoreditch trader is not slow 
to judge the purpose of a loitering boy. So 
he passed nearly two hours; when at last 
he saw his chance. It came in an advan- 
tageous part of High Street, not far from 
the “ Posties,” though on the opposite side 
of the way. A nurse-girl had left a per- 
ambulator at a shop door while she bought 
inside, and on the perambulator lay loose 
a little skin rug, from which a little fat 
leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set 
his back to the shop and sidled to within 
reach of the perambulator. But it chanced 
that at this moment the nurse-girl stepped 
to the door, and she made a snatch at his 
arm as he lifted the rug. This he dropped 
at once, and was swinging leisurely away 
(for he despised the chase of any nurse- 

78 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

girl) when a man took him suddenly by 
the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky 
ducked under the man’s arm, pulled his 
shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested 
an instant on the tips of his fingers to 
avoid the catch of the other hand, and 
shot out into the road. The man tried to 
follow, but Dicky ran under the belly of a 
standing horse, under the head of another 
that trotted, across the fore-platform of a 
tram-car — behind the driver’s back — and 
so over to the ‘‘ Posties.” 

He slouched into the Jago disappointed. 
As he crossed Edge Lane, he was sur- 
prised to perceive a stranger — a toff, in- 
deed — who walked slowly along, looking 
up, right and left, at the grimy habitations 
about him. He wore a tall hat, and his 
clothes were black, and of a pattern that 
Dicky remembered to have seen at the 
Elevation Mission ; they were, in fact, the 
clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he 
was tall and soundly built, with a certain 
79 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

square muscularity of face, and of age 
about thirty-five. He had ventured into 
the Jago because the police were in pos- 
session, Dicky thought ; and wondered in 
what plight he would leave had he come 
at another time. But losing view of the 
stranger and making his way along Old 
Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed 
the police were gone, and that the Jago 
was free. 

He climbed the broken stairs and pushed 
into the first floor back, hopeful, though 
more doubtful, of dinner. There was 
none. His mother, tied about the neck 
with rags, lay across the bed, nursing the 
damage of yesterday, and commiserating 
herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick 
and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. 
Dicky moved to lift her but at that she 
cried the more, and he was fain to let her 
lie. She rolled her head from side to side 
and raised her thin little hand vaguely to- 
ward it, with feverishly-working fingers. 

8o 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Dicky felt her head and she screamed 
again. There was a lump at the side, 
a hard sharp lump ; got from the stones 
of the roadway yesterday. And there 
was a curious quality, a rather fearful 
quality, in the little wails : uneasily sug- 
gestive of the screams of Sally Green’s 
victims. 

Father was out, prowling. There was * 
nothing eatable in the cupboard, and there 
seemed nothing at home worth staying for. 

He took another look at Looey, but re- 
frained from touching her, and went out. 

The opposite door on the landing was 
wide open, and Dicky could hear nobody 
in the room. He had never seen this 
door open before, and now he ventured on 
a peep ; for the tenants of the front room 
were strangers, late arrivals, and interlop- 
ers. Their name was Roper. Roper was 
a pale cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times 
and out of work. He had a pale wife, 
disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, 

8i 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

her exceeding use of soap and water, her 
aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly 
pale baby ; also there was the pale hunch- 
backed boy of near Dicky’s age. Col- 
lectively, the Ropers were disliked as 
strangers, because they furnished their 
own room, in an obnoxiously complete 
style ; because Roper did not drink, nor 
brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything 
all day but look for work ; because all 
these things were a matter of scanda- 
lous arrogance, impudently subversive of 
Jago custom and precedent. Mrs. Per- 
rott was bad enough, but such people as 

these 

Dicky had never before seen quite such 
a room as this. Everything was so clean; 
the floor, the windows, the bedclothes. 
Also there was a strip of old carpet on 
the floor. There were two perfectly 
sound chairs, and two pink glass vases 
on the mantelpiece ; and a clock. No- 
body was in the room, and Dicky took a 
82 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

step farther. The clock attracted him 
again. It was a small, cheap, nickel- 
plated cylindrical thing, of American 
make, and it reminded him at once of the 
Bishop’s watch. It was not gold, cer- 
tainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and 
it could go — it was going. Dicky stepped 
back and glanced at the landing ; then he 
darted into the room, whipped the clock 
under the breast of the big jacket and 
went for the stairs. 

Half-way down he met the pale hunch- 
back ascending. Left at home alone, he 
had been standing in the front doorway. 
He saw Dicky’s haste ; saw also the sus- 
picious bulge under his jacket, and straight- 
way seized Dicky’s arm. 

“ Where ’a’ you bin ? ” he asked sharply. 
“ Bin in our room What you got there ? ” 
‘‘ Nothin’ o’ yours, ’ump. Git out o’ 
that ! ” Dicky pushed him aside. “ If 
ye do n’t le’ go, I ’ll corpse ye ! ” 

But one arm and hand was occupied 

83 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

with the bulge, and the other was for the 
moment unequal to the work of driving off 
the assailant. The two children wrangled 
and struggled downstairs, through the door- 
way and into the street; the hunchback, weak 
but infuriate, buffeting, biting and whim- 
pering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a 
chance to break away and run. So they 
scrambled together across the street, Dicky 
dragging away from the house at every 
step ; and just at the corner of Luck Row, 
getting his fore-arm across the other’s face, 
he back-heeled him, and the little hunch- 
back fell heavily, and lay breathless and 
sobbing, while Dicky scampered through 
Luck Row and round the corner into 
Meakin Street. 

Mr. Weech was busier now, for there 
were customers. But Dicky and his 
bulge he saw ere they were well over the 
threshold. 

“Ah, yus, Dicky,” he said, coming to 


84 


A CHILD OF THE JAGG 

meet him. “ I was expectin’ you. Come 
in — 

In the swe-e-et by arC by 

TV ? shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er ! 
Come in ’ere.” 

Still humming his hymn, Mr. Weech 
led Dicky into the shop parlour. Here 
Dicky produced the clock, which Mr. 
Weech surveyed with no great approval. 

‘‘ You ’ll ’ave to try an’ do better than 
this, you know,” he said. “ But any ’ow 
’ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf 
wot you owe, I reckon. Want some din- 
ner ? ” 

This was a tact, and Dicky admitted it. 

“Awright — 

In the swe-e-e~t by an* by ^ — 

Come out an’ set down. 1 ’ll bring you 
somethink ’ot.” 

This proved to be a very salt bloater, a 
cup of the usual muddy coffee, tasting of 
burnt toast and a bit of bread, afterwards 


85 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

supplemented by a slice of cake. This to 
Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there 
was the adult dignity of taking your din- 
ner in a cofFee-shop; which Dicky sup- 
ported indomitably now that he began to 
feel at ease in Mr. Weech’s; leaning back 
in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking 
about at the walls with the grocers’ alma- 
nacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday 
School Anniversary bills of past date, gath- 
ered from afar to signalise the elevated 
morals of the establishment. 

“Done?” queried Mr. Weech in his 
ear. “ Awright, don’t ’ang about ’ere 
then. Bloater’s a penny, bread a ’a’peny, 
cawfy a penny, cake a penny. You’ll 
owe thrippence-’a’peny now.” 


86 


VIII 

When Dicky Perrott and the small 
hunchback were hauling and struggling 
across the street, old Fisher came down 
from the top-floor back, wherein he dwelt 
with his son Bob, Bob*s wife and two sis- 
ters, and five children ; an apartment in no 
way so clean as the united efforts of ten 
people might be expected to have made it. 
Old Fisher, on whose grimy face the 
wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at 
the open door on the first floor, and, as 
Dicky had done, took a peep. Perplexed 
at the monstrous absence of dirt, and en- 
couraged by the stillness. Old Fisher also 
ventured within. Nobody was in charge, 
and Old Fisher, mentally pricing the pink 
glass vases at three-pence, made for a 
87 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

small chest in the corner of the room and 
lifted the lid. Within lay many of Roper’s 
tools, from among which he had that 
morning taken such as he might want on 
an emergent call to work, to carry as he 
tramped Curtain Road. Clearly these were 
the most valuable things in the place, and, 
slipping a few small articles into his pock- 
ets, Old Fisher took a good double handful 
of the larger, and tramped upstairs with 
them. Presently he returned with Bob’s 
/ missus, and together they started with 
more. As they emerged, however, there 
on the landing stood the little hunchback, 
sobbing and smearing his face with his 
sleeve. At sight of this new pillage he 
burst into sharp wails, standing impotent 
on the landing, his streaming eyes follow- 
ing the man and woman ascending before 
him. Old Fisher, behind, stumped the 
stairs with a clumsy affectation of absent- 
mindedness j the woman in front looked 


88 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

down, merely indifferent. Scarce were 
they vanished above, however, when the 
little hunchback heard his father and mother 
on the lower stairs. 


IX 

Dicky came moodily back from his 
dinner at Mr. Weech’s, plunged in mys- 
tified computation : starting with a debt 
of twopence, he had paid Mr. Weech an 
excellent clock — a luxurious article in 
Dicky’s eyes — had eaten a bloater, and 
had emerged from the transaction owing 
threepence half-penny. Of what such a 
clock cost he had no notion, though he 
felt it must be some inconceivable sum 
As Mr. Weech put it the adjustment 
of accounts would seem to be quite 
correct ; but the broad fact that all had 
ended in increasing his debt by three half- 
pence, remained and perplexed him. He 
remembered having seen such clocks in a 
shop in Norton Folgate. To ask the 


90 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

price, in person, were but to be chased 
out of the shop ; but they were probably 
ticketed, and perhaps he might ask some 
bystander to read the ticket. This brought 
the reflection that, after all, reading was a 
useful accomplishment on occasion; though 
a matter of too much time and trouble to 
be worth while. Dicky had never been 
to school ; for the Elementary Education 
Act ran in the Jago no more than any 
other Act of Parliament. There was a 
Board School, truly, away out of the 
Jago bounds, by the corner of Honey Lane, 
where children might go free, and where 
some few Jago children did go now and 
again, when boots were to be given away, 
or when tickets were to be had, for tea, or 
soup, or the like. But most parents were 
of Josh Perrott’s opinion — that school- 
going was a practice best never begun ; 
for then the child was never heard of, 
and there was no chance of inquiries or 
such trouble — not that any such inquiries 


91 


A CHILD OF THE JAGG 

were common in the Jago, or led to any- 
thing. 

Meantime Dicky, minded to know if 
his adventure had made any stir in the 
house, carried his way deviously towards 
home. Working through the parts beyond 
Jago Row, he fetched 'round into Honey 
Lane, so coming at New Jago Street from 
the farther side. Choosing one of the 
houses whose backs gave on Jago Court, 
he slipped through the passage, and so, by 
the back-yard, crawled through the broken 
fence into the court. Left and right were 
the fronts of houses, four a side. Before 
him, to the right of the narrow archway 
leading to Old Jago Street, was the window 
of his own home. He gained the back- 
yard quietly, and at the kitchen door met 
Tommy Rann. 

“ Come on,” called Tommy. “ 'Ere *s 
a barney ! They 're a-pitchin' into them 
noo 'uns — Roperses. Roperses sez Fish- 


93 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

erses is sneaked their things. They are 
a-gittin’ of it ! ” 

From the stairs, indeed, came shouts and 
curses, bumps and sobs and cries. The 
first landing and half the stairs were full of 
people, men and women, Ranns and Learys 
together. When Ranns joined Learys it 
was an ill omen for them they marched 
against ; and never were they so ready and 
auxious to combine as after a fight between 
themselves, were but some common object 
of attack available. Here it was. Here 
were these pestilent outsiders, the Ropers, 
assailing the reputation of the neighbour- 
hood by complaining of being robbed. As 
though their mere presence in the Jago, 
with their furniture and their superiority, 
were not obnoxious enough : they must turn 
about and call their neighbours thieves. 
They had been tolerated too long already. 
They should now be given something for 
themselves, and have some of their exas- 
perating respectability knocked off : and if, 
93 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

in the confusion, their portable articles of 
furniture and bed-clothing found their way 
into more deserving hands — why, serve 
them right. 

The requisite volleys of preliminary 
abuse having been discharged, more active 
operations began under cover of fresh vol- 
leys. Dicky, with Tommy Rann behind 
him, struggled up the stairs among legs and 
skirts, and saw that the Ropers, the man 
flushed, but the woman paler than ever, 
were striving to shut their door. Within, 
the hunchback and the baby cried, and 
without, those on the landing, skidding the 
door with their feet, pushed inward, and 
now began to strike and maul. Somebody 
seized the man’s wrist, and Nora Walsh 
got the woman by the hair and dragged her 
head down. In a peep through the scuffle 
Dicky saw her face, ashen and sweat- 
beaded, in the jamb of the door, and saw 
Nora Walsh’s red fist beat into it twice. 
Then somebody came striding up the stairs. 


94 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

and Dicky was pushed further back. Over 
the shoulders of those about him, Dicky 
saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath 
it. It was the stranger he had seen in Edge 
Lane — the parson; active and resolute. 

Nora Walsh he took by the shoulders 
and flung back among the others, and, as 
he turned on him, the man who held 
Roper’s wrist released it and backed off. 

“ What is this ? ” demanded the new- 
comer, stern and hard of face. “ What is 
all this ?” He bent his frown on one and 
another about him, and as he did it, some 
shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others 
fell the blank lack of expression that was 
wont to meet police enquiry in the Jago. 
Dicky looked to see this man beaten down, 
kicked and stripped. But a well-dressed 
stranger was so new a thing in the Jago, 
this one had dropped among them so sud- 
denly, and had withal so bold a confidence, 
that the Jagos stood irresolute. A toft’ was 
not a person to be attacked without due 


95 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

consideration. After such a person there 
were apt to be inquiries, with money to 
back them, and vengeance sharp and cer- 
tain : the thing, indeed, was commonly 
thought too risky. And this man, so un- 
flinchingly confident, must needs have rea- 
son for it. He might have the police at 
instant call — they might be back in the 
Jago at the moment. And he flung them 
back, commanded them, cowed them with 
his hard, intelligent eyes, like a tamer 
among beasts. 

“ Understand this, now,” he went on, 
with a sharp tap of his stick on the floor. 
“ This is a sort of thing I will not tolerate 
in my parish — in this parish ; nor in any 
other place where I may meet it. Go 
away, and try to be ashamed of yourselves 
— go. Go, all of you, I say, to your own 
homes ; I shall come there and talk to you 
again soon. Go along, Sam Cash — you * ve 
a broken head already, I see. Take it 
away ; I shall come and see you too.” 

96 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Those on the stairs had melted away 
like punished school-children. Most of 
the others, after a moment of averted face 
and muttered justification one to another, 
were dragging their feet, each with a hang- 
dog pretence of sauntering airily off from 
some sight no longer interesting. Sam 
Cash, who had already seen the stranger in 
the street, and was thus perhaps a trifle 
less startled than the others at his advent, 
stood, however, with some assumption of 
virtuous impudence, till amazed by sudden 
address in his own name ; whereat, clean 
discomfited, he ignominiously turned tail 
and sneaked downstairs in meaner case 
than the rest. How should this strange 
parson know him, and know his name 
Plainly he must be connected with the 
police. He had brought out the name as 
pat as you please. So argued Sam Cash 
with his fellows in the outer street ; never 
recalling that Jerry Gullen had called aloud 
to him by name, when first he observed 
97 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

the parson in the street ; had called to him, 
indeed, to haste to the bashing of the 
Ropers ; and thus had first given the 
stranger notice of the proceeding. But it 
was the way of the Jago that its mean 
cunning saw a mystery and a terror where 
simple intelligence saw there was none. 

As the crowd began to break up, Dicky 
pushed his own door a little open behind 
him and there stood on his own ground as 
the others cleared off ; and the hunchback 
ventured a peep from behind his swooning 
mother. 

“ There y* are, that *s 'im ! he shouted, 
pointing at Dicky. “ ’E begun it ! ’E took 
the clock r* 

Dicky instantly dropped behind his door 
and shut it fast. 

The invaders had all gone — the Fishers 
had made upstairs in the beginning — be- 
fore the parson turned and entered the 
Ropers’ room. In five minutes he emerged 
and strode upstairs; whence he returned 
98 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ufter a still shorter interval, herding before 
him Old Fisher and Bob Fisher’s missis, 
sulky and reluctant, carrying tools. 

And thus it was that the Reverend 
Henry Sturt first addressed his parishion- 
ers. The parish, besides the Jago, com- 
prised Meakin Street and some way beyond; 
and it was to this less savage district that 
his predecessor had confined his attention. 
Preaching every Sunday in a stable, behind 
a disused shop, in an alley, and distributing 
loaves and sixpences to the old women 
who attended regalarly on that account. 
For to go into the Jago were for him mere 
wasted effort. And so, indeed, the matter 
had been since the parish came into 
being. 


99 


X 


When Dicky retreated from the landing 
and shut the door behind him, he slipped 
the bolt, a strong one, put there by Josh 
Perrott himself, possibly as an accessory 
to escape by the window in some possible 
desperate pass. For a little he listened, 
but no sound hinted of attack from with- 
out, and he turned to his mother. 

Josh Perrott had been out since early 
morning, and Dicky, too, had done no more 
than look in for a moment in search of din- 
ner. Hannah Perrott, grown tired of self- 
commiseration, felt herself neglected and 
aggrieved — slighted in her state of invalid 
privilege. So she transferred some of her 
pity from her sore neck to her desolate con- 
dition as misprized wife and mother, and, 
the better to feel it, proceeded to martyrise 


lOO 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

herself, with melancholy pleasure, by a 
nerveless show of “ setting to rights ” in 
the room — a domestic novelty, perfunctory 
as it was. Looey, still restless and weeping, 
she left on the bed, for, being neglected 
herself, it was not her mood to tend the 
baby; she would aggravate the relish’ of 
her sorrows in her own way. Besides, 
Looey had been given something to eat a 
long time ago, and had not eaten it yet ; 
with her there was nothing else to do. So 
that now, as she dragged a rag along the 
grease-strewn mantelpiece, Mrs. Perrott 
greeted Dicky : “ There y’ are, Dicky, 
cornin’ ’inderin’ ’ere jest when I ’m a-put- 
tin’ things to rights.” And she sighed with 
the weight of another grievance. 

Looey lay on her back, faintly and 
vainly struggling to turn her fearful little 
face from the light. Clutched in her little 
fist was the unclean stump of bread she 
had held for hours. Dicky plucked a soft 
piece and essayed to feed her with it, but 


lOI 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

the dry little mouth rejected the morsel 
and the head turned feverishly from side 
to side to the sound of that novel cry. 
She was hot wherever Dicky touched her, 
and presently he said : — “Mother, I b’lieve 
Looey ’s queer. I think she wants some 
medicine.” 

His mother shook her head peevishly. 
“ O you an’ Looey ’s a noosance,” she 
said. “ A lot you care about me bein’ 
queer, you an’ yer father too, leavin’ me 
all alone like this an’ me feelin’ ready to 
drop, an’ got the room to do an’ all. I 
wish you ’d go away an’ stop ’inderin’ of 
me like this.” 

Dicky took but another look at Looey 
and then slouched out. The landing was 
clear, and the Ropers’ door was shut. He 
wondered what had become of the stranger 
with the tall hat — whether he was in the 
Ropers’ room or not. The thought hur- 
ried him, for he feared to have that stranger 
asking him questions about the clock. He 


102 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

got out into the street, thoughtful. He 
had some compunctions in the matter of 
that clock, now. Not that he could in 
any reasonable way blame himself. There 
the clock had stood at his mercy, and by 
all Jago custom and ethic it was his if 
only he could get clear away with it. 
This he had done, and he had no more 
concern in the business, strictly speaking. 
Nevertheless, since he had seen the 
woman’s face in the jamb of the door he 
felt a sort of pity for her that she should 
have lost her clock. No doubt she had 
enjoyed its possession, as, indeed, he 
would have enjoyed it himself, had he 
not had to take it instantly to Mr. 
Weech. And his fancy wandered ofF in 
meditation of what he would do with 
a clock of his own. To begin with, of 
course, he would open it, and discover the 
secret of its works and its ticking: per- 
haps thereby discovering how to make a 
clock himself. Also he would frequently 


103 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

wind it up, and he would show the inside 
to Looey, in confidence. It would stand 
on the mantelpiece, and raise the social 
position of the family. People would 
come respectfully to ask the time, and he 
would tell them, with an air. Yes, cer- 
tainly a clock must stand eminent among 
the things he would buy, when he had 
plenty of money. He must look put for 
more clicks : the one way to riches. 

As to the Ropers, again. Bad it must 
be, indeed, to be deprived suddenly of a 
clock, after long experience of the joys it 
brought; and Nora Walsh had punched 
the woman in the face, and clawed her hair, 
and the woman could not fight. Dicky 
was sorry for her, and straightway resolved 
to give her another clock — or, if not a 
clock, something that would please her as 
much. He had acquired a clock in the 
morning; why not another in the after- 
noon ? Failing a clock, he would try for 
something else, and the Ropers should 
104 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

have it. The resolve gave Dicky a vir- 
tuous exultation of spirit, the reward of 
the philanthropist. 

Again he began the prowl after likely 
plunder that w^as to be his daily industry. 
Meakin Street he did not try. The chan- 
dlers* and the cook shops held nothing that 
might be counted a consolatory equivalent 
for a clock. Through the “Posties” he 
reached Shoreditch High Street at once, 
and started. 

This time his movements aroused less 
suspicion. In the morning he had no par- 
ticular prize in view, and loitered at every 
shop, waiting his chance at anything port- 
able. Now, with a more definite object, 
he made his promenade easily, but without 
stopping or lounging by shop-fronts. The 
thing, whatsoever it might be, must be 
small, handsome, and of an interesting 
character — at least as interesting as the 
clock was. It must be small, not merely 
for facilitv of concealment and removal — 


T05 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

though these were main considerations 
— but because stealthy presentation were 
then the easier. It would have pleased 
Dicky to hand over his gift openly, and 
to bask in the thanks and consideration 
it would procure. But he had been ac- 
cused of stealing the clock, and an open 
gift would savour of admission and peace- 
offering, whereas in that matter stark 
denial was his plain course. 

A roll of printed stuff would not do; 
apples would not do ; and fish was wide of 
his purpose. Up one side and down the 
other side of High Street he walked, his 
eye instant for suggestion and opportunity. 
But all in vain. Nobody exposed clocks 
out of doors, and of those within not one 
but an attempt on it were simple mad- 
ness. And of the things less desperate of 
access, nothing was proper to the occasion ; 
all were too large, too cheap, or too unin- 
teresting. Oddly, Dicky feared failure 
more than had he been hunting for himself. 
io6 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

He tried further south, in Norton Fol- 
gate. There was a shop of cheap second- 
hand miscellanies; saddles, razors, straps, 
dumb-bells, pistols, boxing gloves, trunks, 
bags, and billiard-balls. Many of the things 
hung about the door-posts in bunches, and 
within all was black, as in a cave. At one 
door-post was a pistol. Nothing could be 
more interesting than a pistol — indeed, it 
was altogether a better possession than a 
clock ; and it was a small, handy sort of 
thing. Probably the Ropers would be de- 
lighted with a pistol. He stood and re- 
garded it with much interest. There were 
difficulties. In the first place, it was 
beyond his reach ; and, in the second, it 
hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. 
Just then, glancing within the shop, he 
perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding 
him, panther-like, from the inner gloom ; 
and he hastily resumed his walk, as the 
Jew shop-keeper reached the door and 
watched him safely away. 


107 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Now he came to Bishopsgate Street, and 
here at last he chose the gift. It was at a 
toy-shop ; a fine, flaming toy-shop, with 
carts, dolls and hoops dangling above, and 
wooden horses standing below, guarding 
two baskets by the door. One contained a 
mixed assortment of tops, whips, boats, and 
woolly dogs ; the other was lavishly filled 
with shining, round metal boxes noblv 
decorated with coloured pictures, each box 
with a little cranked handle. As he looked, 
a tune, delightfully tinkled on some in- 
strument, was heard from within the shop. 
Dicky peeped. There was a lady, with 
a little girl at her side, looking eagerly at 
just such a shining round box in the 
saleswoman’s hands, and it was from 
that box, as the saleswoman turned the 
handle, that the tune came. Dicky was 
enchanted. This — this was the thing, 
beyond debate; a pretty little box that 
would play music whenever you turned a 
handle. This was a thing worth any fifty 


loS 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

clocks. Indeed, it was almost as good as 
a regular barrel organ, the first thing he 
would buy if he were rich. 

There was a shop-boy in charge of the 
goods outside the window, and his eyes 
were on Dicky. So Dicky whistled ab- 
sently, and strolled carelessly along. He 
swung behind a large waggon, crossed the 
road, and sought a convenient door-step; 
for his mind was made up, and his business 
was now to sit down before the toy-shop 
and wait his opportunity. 

A shop had been boarded up after a fire, 
and from its doorstep one could command 
a perfect view of the toy-shop across the 
broad thoroughfare with its crowded traffic 
— could sit, moreover, safe from interfer- 
ence. Here Dicky took his seat, secure 
from the notice of the guardian shop-boy, 
whose attention was given to passengers on 
his own side. The little girl, gripping the 
new toy in her hand, came out at her 
mother’s side and trotted ofF. For a mo- 


109 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ment Dicky reflected that the box could be 
easily snatched, but after all the little girl 
had but one; whereas the shop-woman had 
many, and at best could play on no more 
than one at a time. 

He resumed his watch of the shop-boy, 
confident that, sooner or later, a chance 
would come. A woman stopped to ask 
the price of something, and Dicky had 
half crossed the road ere the boy had be- 
gun to answer. But the answer was 
short, the boy’s attention was released too 
soon. 

At last the shop-woman called the boy 
within, and Dicky darted across — not di- 
rectly, but so as to arrive invisibly at the 
side next the basket of music-boxes. A 
quick glance behind him, a snatch at the 
box with the reddest picture, and a dash 
into the traflic did it. 

The dash away would not have been 
necessary but for the sudden reappearance 
of the shop-boy ere the box had vanished 


JTO 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

amid the intricacies of Dicky’s jacket. 
Dicky was fast, but the boy was little 
slower, and was, moreover, bigger, and 
stronger on his legs. Dicky reached the 
other pavement and turned the next cor- 
ner into Widegate Street, the pursuer 
scarce ten yards behind. It was now that 
Dicky first experienced “hot beef” — 
which is the Jago idiom denoting the 
plight of one harried by the cry “ Stop 
thief ! ” Down Widegate Street, across 
Sandys Row and into Raven Row he ran 
his best, clutching the hem of his jacket 
and the music-box that lay within. Cross- 
ing Sandys Row a loafing lad shouldered 
against the shop-boy, and Dicky was 
grateful, for he made it a gain of several 
yards. 

But others had joined in the hunt, and 
Dicky for the first time began to fear. 
This was a bad day — twice already he 
had been chased; and now — it was bad. 
He thought little more, for a stunning 


III 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

fear fell upon him : the fear of the hunted, 
that calculates nothing and is measured by 
no apprehension of consequences. He re- 
membered that he must avoid Spitalfields 
Market, full of men who would stop himj 
and he knew that in many places where a 
man would be befriended, many would 
make a virtue of stopping a boy. To the 
right along Bell Lane he made an agonised 
burst of speed, and for a while he saw not 
nor remembered anything ; heard no more 
than dreadful shouts drawing nearer his 
shoulders, felt only the fear. But he 
could not last. Quick enough when 
fresh, he was tiny and ill-fed, and he now 
felt his legs trembling and his wind going. 
Something seemed to beat on the back of 
his head, till he wondered madly if it were 
the shop-boy with a stick. He turned cor- 
ners and chose his way by mere instinct, 
ashen-faced, staring, open-mouthed. How 
soon would he give in, and drop ? A street 
more — half a street — ten yards? Roll- 


112 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ing and tripping, he turned one last corner 
and almost fell against a vast, fat, unkempt 
woman whose clothes slid from her shoul- 
ders. 

“ ’Ere y’ are boy,” said the woman, and 
flung him by the shoulder through the 
doorway before which she stood. 

He was saved at his extremity, for he 
could never have reached the street’s end. 
The woman who had done it (probably 
she had boys of her own on the crook) 
filled the entrance with her frowsy bulk, 
and the chase straggled past. Dicky caught 
the stair-post for a moment’s support, and 
then staggered out at the back of the house. 
He gasped, he panted, things danced blue 
before him, but still he clutched his jacket 
hem and the music-box lying within. The 
back door gave on a cobble-paved court, 
with other doors, two coster’s barrows and 
a few dusty fowls. Dicky sat on a step 
where a door was shut and rested his 
head against the frame. 

"3 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

The beating in his head grew slower 
and lighter, and presently he could breathe 
with no fear of choking. He rose and 
moved off, still panting, and feeble in the 
legs. The court ended in an arched pas- 
sage through which he gained the street 
beyond. Here he had but to turn to the 
left,and he was in Brick Lane, and thence 
all was clear to the Old Jago. Regaining 
his breath and his confidence as he went, 
he bethought him of the Jago Row re- 
treat, where he might examine his prize at 
leisure, embowered amid trucks and bar- 
rows. Thither he pushed his way, and 
soon, in the shade of the upturned bar- 
row, he brought out the music- box. 
Bright and shiny, it had taken no damage 
in the flight, though on his hands he found 
scratches, and on his shins bruises, got he 
knew not how. On the top of the box 
was the picture of a rosy little boy in 
crimson presenting a scarlet nosegay to a 
rosy little girl in pink, while a red brick 

114 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

mansion filled the distance and solidified 
the composition. The brilliant hoop that 
made the sides (silver, Dicky was con- 
vinced) was stamped in patterns, and the 
little brass handle was an irresistible temp- 
tation. Dicky climbed a truck and looked 
about him, peeping from beside the loose 
fence-plank. Then, seeing nobody very 
near, he muffled the box as well as he 
could in his jacket and turned the handle. 

This was, indeed, worth all the trouble. 
‘‘ Linger longer. Loo,” was the tune, and 
Dicky, with his head aside and his ear on 
the bunch of jacket that covered the box, 
listened; his lips parted, his eyes seeking 
illimitable space. He played the tune 
through, and played it again ; and then, 
growing reckless, played it with the box 
unmuffled, till he was startled by a bang 
on the fence from without. It was but 
a passing boy with a stick, but Dicky was 
sufficiently disturbed to abandon his quar- 
ters and take his music elsewhere. 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

What he longed to do was to take it 
home and play it to Looey, but that was out 
of the question; he remembered the watch. 
But there was Jerry Gullen’s canary, and 
him Dicky sought and found. Canary 
blinked solemnly when the resplendent 
box was flashed in his eyes, and set his 
ears back and forward as, muffled again 
in Dicky’s jacket, it tinkled out its tune. 

Tommy Rann should not see it, lest he 
prevail over its munificent dedication to 
the Ropers. Truly, as it was, Dicky’s 
resolution was hard to abide by. The 
thing acquired at such a cost of patience, 
address, hard flight and deadly fear was 
surely his by right — as surely, quite, as the 
clock had been. And such a thing he 
might never touch again. 

But he put by the temptation manfully, 
and came out by Jerry Gullen’s front door. 
He would look no more on the music-box, 
beautiful as it was : he would convey it to 
the Ropers before temptation came again. 

1 16 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

It was not easy to devise likely means. 
Their door was shut fast, of course. For 
a little while he favoured the plan of set- 
ting the box against the threshold, knock- 
ing and running olF. But an opportunity 
might arise of doing the thing in a way to 
give him some glimpse of the Ropers’ de- 
light, an indulgence he felt entitled to. So 
he waited a little, listened a little, and at 
last came out into the street and loafed. 

It was near six o’clock, and a smell of 
bloater hung about Jerry Gullen’s door 
and window ; under the raised sash Jerry 
Gullen, close cropped and foxy of face, 
smoked his pipe, sprawled his elbows, and 
contemplated the world. Dicky, with the 
music box stowed out of sight, looked as 
blank of design and as destitute of posses- 
sion as he could manage ; for there were 
loafers near Mother Gapp’s, loafers at the 
Luck Row corner — at every corner — 
and loafers by the ‘‘ Posties,” all laggard 
of limb and alert of eye. He had just 
117 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

seen a child, going with an empty beer-can, 
thrown down, robbed of his coppers and 
a poor old top, and kicked away in help- 
less tears; and the incident was common- 
place enough, or many would have lacked 
pocket-money. Whosoever was too young, 
too old, or too weak to fight for it, must 
keep what he had well hidden, in the Jago. 

Down the street came Billy Leary, big, 
flushed and limping, and hanging to a 
smaller man by a fistful of his coat on the 
shoulder. Dicky knew the small man for 
a good toy-getter (which=watch-stealer), — 
and judged he had had a good click, the pro- 
ceeds whereof Billy Leary was battening 
upon in beer-shops. For Billy Leary rarely 
condescended to anything less honourable 
than bashing, and had not yet fallen so 
low as to go about stealing for himself. 
His missus brought many to the cosh, 
and his chief necessity — another drink — 
he merely demanded of the nearest person 
with the money to buy it, on pain of bash- 
118 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ing. Or he walked into the nearest public 
house, selected the fullest pot, and spat in 
it: a ceremony that deprived the purchaser 
of further interest in the beer and left it at 
his own disposal. There were others, both 
Ranns and Learys, who pursued a similar 
way of life; but Billy Leary was biggest 
among them — big men not being common 
in the Jago — and rarely came to difficulty : 
as however he did once, having invaded the 
pot of a stranger, who turned out to be a 
Mile End pugilist exploring Shoreditch. It 
was not well for any Jago who had made 
a click to have Billy Leary know of it ; for 
then the clicker was apt to be sought out, 
clung to, and sucked dry ; possibly bashed 
as well, when nothing more was left, if 
Billy Leary were still but sober enough for 
the work. 

Dicky gazed after the man with interest. 
It was he whom his father was to fight in 
a week or so — perhaps in a few days : on 
the first Sunday, indeed, that Leary should 

n9 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

be deemed fit enough. How much of the 
limp was due to yesterday’s disaster and 
how much to to-day’s beer Dicky could not 
judge. But there seemed little reason to 
/ look for a long delay before the fight. As 
Dicky turned away a man pushed a large 
truck round the corner from Edge Lane, 
and on the footpath beside it walked the 
parson, calm as ever, with black clothes 
and tall hat, whole and unsoiled. He had 
made himself known in the Jago in course 
of that afternoon. He had traversed it from 
end to end, street by street, and alley by 
alley. His self-possession, his readiness, 
his unbending firmness, abashed and per- 
plexed the Jagos, and his appearance 
just as the police had left could but con- 
vince them that he must have some mys- 
terious and potent connexion with the 
force. He had attempted very little in the 
way of domiciliary visiting, being content 
for the time to see his parish and speak 


130 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

here a word and there another with his 
parishioners. An encounter with Kiddo 
Cook did as much as anything toward 
securing him a proper deference. In his 
second walk through Old Jago Street, as 
he neared The Feathers, he was aware of 
a bunch of grinning faces pressed against 
the bar window ; and as he came abreast, 
forth stepped Kiddo Cook from the door, 
impudently affable, smirking and ducking 
with mock obsequiousness, and offering a 
quart pot. 

“An* *ow jer find jerself, sir ? he asked, 
with pantomime cordiality. “ Hof ’ly shock- 
in’, these ’ere lower classes, ain’t they ? 
Er — yus ; disgustin’, weally. Er — might 
I — er — prepose — er — a little refresh- 
ment ? Allow me ! ” 

The parson, grimly impassive, heard him 
through, took the pot, and, instantly jerk- 
ing it upward, shot the beer, a single splash, 
into Kiddo’s face. “ There are things I 


121 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

must teach you, I see, my man,” he said, 
without moving a muscle, except to return 
the pot. 

Kiddo Cook, coughing, drenched and 
confounded, took the pot instinctively and 
backed to Mother Gapp’s door, while the 
bunch of faces at the bar window tossed 
and rolled in a joyous ecstasy ; the ghost 
whereof presently struggled painfully among 
Kiddo’s own dripping features as he real- 
ised the completeness of his defeat, and the 
expedience of a patient grin. The parson 
went calmly on. 

Before this, indeed when he left the 
Ropers’ room, and just after Dicky had 
started out, he had looked in at the Per- 
rotts* quarters to speak about the clock. 
But plainly no clock was there, and Mrs. 
Perrott’s flaccid indignation at the sug- 
gestion, and her unmistakable ignorance of 
the affair, decided him to carry the matter no 
further, at any rate for the present. More- 
over, the little hunchback’s tale was incon- 


122 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

elusive. He had seen no clock in Dicky’s 
possession — had but met him on the stairs 
with a bulging jacket. The thing might 
be suspicious, but the new parson knew 
better than to peril his influence by charg- 
ing where he could not convict. So 
he duly commiserated Hannah Perrott’s 
troubles, suggested that the baby seemed 
unwell and had better be taken to a doctor, 
and went his way about the Jago. 

Now he stopped at the truck by Dicky’s 
front door and mounted to the Ropers’ 
room. For he had seen that the Jago was 
no place for them now, and had himself 
found them a suitable room away by Dove 
Lane. And so, emboldened by his com- 
pany, the Ropers came forth, and with the 
help of the man who had brought the 
truck, carried down the pieces of their bed- 
stead, a bundle of bedding, the two chairs, 
the pink vases and the strip of old carpet, 
and piled them on the truck with the few 
more things that were theirs. 


123 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Dicky, with his hand on the music box 
in the lining of his jacket, sauntered up by 
the tail of the truck and, waiting his 
chance, plunged his gift under the bundle 
of bedding and left it there. But the little 
hunchback’s sharp eyes were jealously on 
him, and, ‘‘Look there!” he squealed. “’E 
put ’is ’and in the truck and took some- 
think ! ” 

“Ye lie!” answered Dicky, indignant 
and hurt, but cautiously backing off; “I 
ain ’t got nothink.” He spread his hands 
and opened his jacket in proof. “ Think 
I got yer bloomin’ bedstead ? ” 

He had nothing, it was plain. In fact, 
at the tail of the truck there was nothing 
he could easily have moved at all, cer- 
tainly nothing he could have concealed. 
So the rest of the little removal was hur- 
ried, for heads were now at windows, the 
loafers began to draw about the truck, and 
trouble might break out at any moment: 
indeed, the Ropers could never have ven- 


124 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

tured from their room but for the general 
uneasy awe of the parson. For nothing 
was so dangerous in the Jago as to impugn 
its honesty. To rob another was reas- 
onable and legitimate, and to avoid being 
robbed, so far as might be, was natural 
and proper. But to accuse anybody of 
a theft was unsportsmanlike, a foul out- 
rage, a shameful abuse, a thing unpardon- 
able. You might rob a man, bash a 
man, even kill a man ; but to “ take 
away his character ” — even when he had 
none — was to draw the execrations of 
the whole Jago ; while to assail the pure 
fame of the place — to “ give the street a 
bad name” — this was to bring the Jago 
howling and bashing about your ears. 

The truck moved off at last, amid mur- 
murings, mutterings and grunts from the 
onlookers. The man of the truck pulled, 
Roper shoved behind, and his wife, with 
her threadbare decency and her meagre, 
bruised face, carried the baby, while the 


125 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

hunchbacked boy went by her side. All 
this under convoy of the Reverend Henry 
Sturt. 

A little distance gave more confidence 
to a few, and when the group had reached 
within a score of yards of Edge Lane, 
there came a hoot or two, a “ Yah ! ” and 
other less spellable sounds, expressive of 
contempt and defiance. Roper glanced 
back nervously, but the rest held on their 
way regardless. Then came a brickbat, 
which missed the woman by very little and 
struck the truck-wheel. At this the par- 
son stopped and turned on his heel, and 
Cocko Harnwell, the flinger, drove his 
hands into his breeches-pockets and affected 
an interest in Mother Gapp’s window, 
till, perceiving the parson’s eyes directed 
sternly upon him, and the parson’s stick 
rising to point at him, he ingloriously 
turned tail, and scuttled into Jago Court. 

And so the Ropers left the Jago. Dove 
Lane was but a stone-throw ahead when 


126 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

some of the load shifted, and the truck was 
stopped to set the matter right. The chest 
was pushed back and the bedding was 
lifted to put against it, and so the musical- 
box came to light. Roper picked it up 
and held it before the Vicar’s eyes. “ Look 
at that, sir,” he said. “You’ll witness I 
know nothing of it, won ’t you ? It ain ’t 
mine an’ I never saw it before. It ’s bin 
put in for spite, to put a theft on us. 
When they come for it you ’ll bear me out 
sir, won *t you That was the Perrott 
boy as was put up to do that, I ’ll be bound. 
When he was behind the truck.” 

But nobody came for Dicky’s gift, and 
in the Jago twilight Dicky vainly struggled 
to whistle the half-remembered tune: and 
to persuade himself that he was not sorry 
that the box was gone. 


127 


XI. 


Josh Perrott reached home late for tea 
but in good humor. He had spent most of 
the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing 
attendance on the High Mobsmen. Those 
of the High Mob were the flourishing 
practitioners in burglary, the mag, the 
mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe 
of such dippers — pickpockets — as could 
dress well, welshers and snidesmen. These, 
the grandees of rascality, lived in places far 
from the Jago, and some drove in gigs and 
pony traps. But they found the Bag of 
Nails a convenient and secluded exchange 
and house of call, and there they met, 
made appointments, designed villainies, and 
tossed for sovereigns : deeply reverenced 
by the admiring Jagos, among whom no 
ambition flourished but this — to become 


128 


A CHILD OP' THE JAGO 

also of these resplendent ones. It was of 
these that old Beveridge had spoken one 
day to Dicky, in language the child but 
half understood. The old man sat on a 
kerb in view of the Bag of Nails and 
smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He 
hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing 
with his pipe, said: — “See that man with 
the furs ? ” 

“ What ?” Dicky replied. “ Mean ’im 
in the ice-cream coat, smokin’ a cigar ? 
Yus.” 

“ And the other, with the brimmy tail- 
hat, and the red face, and the umbrella 

“ Yus.” 

“ What are they ?” 

“ ’Igh mob. ’Ooks. Toffs.” 

“ Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you 
Jago whelp, look at them — look hard. 
Some day, if you ’re clever — cleverer 
than anyone in the Jago now — if you *re 
only scoundrel enough, and brazen enougli, 
and lucky enough - — one of a thousand — 
129 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

maybe you *11 be like them ; bursting with 
high living, drunk when you like, red and 
pimply. There it is — that’s your aim 
in life — there *s your pattern. Learn to 
read and write, learn all you can, learn 
cunning, spare nobody and stop at noth- 
ing, and perhaps — ” he waved his hand 
toward the Bag of Nails. “ It ’s the best 
the world has for you, for the Jago ’s got 
you, and that ’s the only way out, except 
gaol and the gallows. So do your devil- 
most, or God help you, Dicky Perrott — 
though He won ’t ; for the Jago ’s got 
you !” 

Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and 
manners, and the Jago regarded him as a 
trifle “balmy,” though anything but a 
fool. So that Dicky troubled little to sift 
the meaning of what he said. 

Josh Perrott’s mission among the High 
Mob had been to discover some Mobs- 
man who might be disposed to back him 
in the fight with Billy Leary. For though 
130 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

a private feud were the first cause of the 
turn-up, still, business must never be neg- 
lected, and a feud or anything else that 
could produce money must be made to 
produce it, and when a fight of excep- 
tional merit is placed before spectators, it 
is but fair that they should pay for their 
diversion. 

But few High Mobsmen were at the 
Bag of Nails that day. Sunday was the 
day of the chief gatherings of the High 
Mob : Sunday the market-day, so to speak, 
of the Jago, when such such rent as was 
due weekly was paid (most of the Jago rents 
were paid daily and nightly) and other ac- 
counts were settled or fought out. More- 
over, the High Mob were perhaps a trifle shy 
of the Jago at the time of a faction fight ; 
and one was but just over, and that cut 
short at a third of the usual span of days. 
So that Josh waited long and touted vainly 
till a patron arrived who knew him of old j 
who had employed him, indeed, as “ mind- 
131 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

er*’ — which means a protector or a bully, 
as you please to regard it — on a race- 
course adventure involving bodily risk. 
On this occasion Josh had earned his 
wages with hard knocks, given and taken, 
and his employer had conceived a high 
and a thankful opinion of his capacity. 
Wherefore he listened now to the tale of 
the coming fight, and agreed to pro- 
vide something in the way of stakes, and 
to put something “ on ** for Josh himself : 
looking for his own profit to the bets he 
might make at favourable odds with his 
friends. For Billy Leary was notorious 
as being near prime ruffian of the Jago, 
while Josh’s reputation was neither so evil 
nor so wide. And so it was settled, and 
Josh came pleased to his tea ; for assuredly 
Billy Leary would have no difficulty in 
finding another notable of the High Mob 
to cover the stakes. 

Dicky was at home, sitting by Looey on 
the bed, and when he called his father 


132 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby 
was out of sorts. “ She ’s rum about the 
eyes,” he said to his wife. “ Blimy if she 
do n’t look as though she was goin* to 
squint.” 

Josh was never particularly solicitous as 
to the children, but he saw that they were 
fed and clothed — perhaps by mere force 
of the habit of his more reputable days of 
plastering. He had brought home tripe, 
rolled in paper, and stuffed into his coat 
pocket, to make a supper on the strength 
of the day’s stroke of business. When 
this tripe was boiled, he and Dicky essayed 
to drive morsels into Looey’s mouth, and 
to wash them down with beer ; but to no 
end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh 
decided that she must go to the dispensary 
in the morning. And in the morning he 
took her, with Dicky at his heels ; for not 
only did his wife still nurse her neck, but 
in truth she feared to venture abroad. 

The dispensary was no charitable insti- 

133 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

tution, but a shop so labeled in Meakin 
Street, one of half a dozen such kept by a 
medical man who lived away from them, 
and bothered himself as little about them 
as was consistent with banking the takings 
and signing the death certificates. A needy 
young student, whose sole qualification was 
cheapness, was set to do the business of 
each place, and the uniform price for 
advice and medicine was sixpence. But 
there was a deal of professional character 
in the blackened and gilt-lettered front 
windows, and the sixpences came by hun- 
dreds. For hospital letters but rarely came 
Meakin Street way. Such as did were 
mostly in the hands of tradesmen who sub- 
scribed for the purpose of getting them, 
and gave them to their best customers, 
as was proper and bnsiness-like. And so 
the dispensary flourished, and the needy 
young student grew shifty and callous, and 
no doubt there were occasional faith-cures. 
Indeed, cures of simple science were not at 

134 


a 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

all impossible. For there was always 
good supply of two drugs in the place — 
Turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid; both 
very useful, both very cheap, and both 
going very far in varied preparation, prop- 
erly handled. An ounce or two of sul- 
phuric acid, for instance, costing something 
fractional, dilutes with water iuto many 
gallons of physic. Excellent medicines 
they made, too, and balanced each other 
remarkably well by reason of their opposite 
effects. But indeed they were not all, for 
sometimes there were other two or three 
drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps trouble- 
somely, with the simple division of thera- 
peutics into the two provinces of rhubarb 
and sulphuric acid. 

Business was brisk at the dispensary : 
several were waiting, and medicine and 
advice were going at the rate of two min- 
utes for sixpence. Looey’s case was not 
so clear as most of the others ; she could 
not describe its symptoms succinctly, as 

135 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

“ a pain here,” or “ a tight feeling there.” 
She did but lie heavily, staring blankly 
upward (she did not mind the light now) 
with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat 
her odd little wail; and Dicky and her 
father could tell very little. The young 
student had a passing thought that he might 
have known a trifle more of the matter if 
he had had time to turn up Ross on nerve 
and brain troubles — were such a proceed- 
ing consistent with the dignity of the 
dispensary — but straightway assigning the 
case to the rhubarb province, made up a 
powder, ordered Josh to keep the baby 
quiet, and pitched his sixpence among the 
others well within the two minutes. 

And faith in the dispensary was strength- 
ened, for indeed Looey seemed a little 
better after the powder ; and she was fed 
with spoonfuls of a fluid bought at a 
chandler’s shop, and called milk. 


136 


XII 


Dicky Perrott, come ’ere,*' said Mr. 
Aaron Weech in a voice of sad rebuke, a 
few days later. “ Come ’ere, Dicky Per- 
rott.” 

He shook his head solemnly as he 
stooped. Dicky slouched up. 

“ What was that you found the other 
day and did n’t bring to me .? ” 

‘‘ Nuffin’.” Dicky withdrew a step. 

“ It ’s no good you a-tellin’ me that, 
Dicky Perrott, when I know better. You 
know very well you can ’t prevent me 
knowin’.” His little eyes searched Dicky’s 
face, and Dicky sulkily shifted his own 
gaze. ‘‘You’re a wicked, ungrateful 
young ’ound, an’ I ’ve a good mind to tell 
a p’liceman to find out where you got that 
clock. Come ’ere, now — don’t you try 
137 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

runnin* away. Wot ! After me a-takin’ 
you in when you was ’ungry, an* givin’ 
you cawfy an* cake, an* good advice like a 
father, an* a bloater an* all, and you owin* 
me thrippence *a*peny besides, then you 
goes an* — an takes your findin*s somewhere 
else ! ** 

“ I never ! *’ protested Dicky stoutly, 
but Mr. Weech’s cunning, equal to a 
shrewd guess that since his last visit Dicky 
had probably had another “ find,** and 
quick to detect a lie, was slack to perceive 
a truth. 

“ Now, don*t you go an* add on a 
wicked lie to your sinful ungratefulness, 
wotever you do,” he said severely, “that*s 
wuss, and I alwis know. Doncher know 
the little *ymn } : — 

'An* *im as does one fault at fust 
An* lies to *ide it, makes it two ! * 

It *s bad enough to be ungrateful to me as 
is bin so kind to you, an* it *s wuss to 
break the fust commandment. If the 
138 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

bloater do n’t inflooence you, the *oly ’ymn 
ought. ’Ow would you like me to go an’ 
ask yer father for that thrippence ’a’peny 
you owe me ? That ’s wot I ’ll ’ave to 
do, if you do n’t mind.” 

Dicky would not have liked it at all, 
as his frightened face testified. 

‘‘ Then find somethink an’ pay it at 
once, an’ then I wo n’t. I wo n’t be ’ard 
on you, if you ’ll be a good boy. Bat 
don’t git playin’ no more tricks — cos I ’ll 
know all about ’em. Now, go and find 
somethink quick.” And Dicky went. 


'39 


XIII 


Ten days after his first tour of the Old 
Jago, the Reverend Henry Sturt first 
preached in the parish church made of a 
stable, in an alley behind Meakin Street, 
but few yards away, though beyond sight 
and sound of the Jago. 

There, that Sunday morning was a morn- 
ing of importance, a time of excitement, 
for the fight between Billy Leary and Josh 
Perrott was to come off in Jago Court. 
The assurance that there was money in the 
thing was a sovereign liniment for Billy 
Leary’s bruises — for they were but bruises 
— and he hastened to come by that money, 
lest it melt by caprice of the backers, 
or the backers themselves fall at un- 
lucky odds with the police. He made little 
of Josh Perrott, his hardness and known 


140 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

fighting power notwithstanding. For was 
there not full a stone and a half between 
their weights? and had Billy not four or 
five inches the better in height and a com- 
mensurate advantage in reach ? And Billy 
Leary’s own hardness and fighting power 
were well proved enough. 

It was past eleven o’clock. The weekly 
rents — for the week forthcoming — had 
been extracted, or partly extracted, or 
scuffled over. Old Poll Rann, who had 
made money in sixty-five years of stall- 
farming and iniquity, had made the rounds 
of the six houses she rented, to turn out 
the tenants of the night who were disposed 
to linger. Many had already stripped 
themselves to their rags at pitch and toss 
in Jago Court; and the game still went 
busily on in the crowded area and in over- 
flow groups in Old Jago Street, and men 
found themselves deprived, not merely of 
the money for that day’s food and that 
night’s lodging, but even of the last few 

141 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

pence set aside to back a horse for Tues- 
day's race. A little-regarded fight or two 
went on here and there as usual, and on 
kerbs and doorsteps sat women, hideous at 
all ages, filling the air with the rhetoric of 
the Jago. 

Presently down from Edge Lane and 
the “Posties** came the High Mobsmen, 
swaggering in check suits and billycocks, 
gold chains and lumpy rings: stared at, 
envied, and here and there pointed out by 
name or exploit : “ Him as done the sparks 
in from Regent Street for nine centuries o' 
quids"; “him as done five stretch for a 
snide bank bill an' they never found the 
'oof" ; “ him as maced the bookies in 
France an' shot the nark in the boat " ; 
and so forth. And the High Mob being 
come, the fight was due. 

Of course, a fight merely as a fight was 
no great matter of interest ; the thing was 
too common. But there was money on 
this; and again, it was no common thing to 

142 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

find Billy Leary defied, still less to find 
him challenged. Moreover, the thing had 
a Rann and Leary complexion, and it arose 
out of the battle of less than a fortnight 
back. So that Josh Perrott did not lack 
for partisans, though not a Rann believed 
he could stand long before Billy Leary. 
Billy’s cause, too, had lost some popularity 
because it had been reported that Sally 
Green, in hospital, had talked of “ sum- 
monsing ” Nora Walsh in the matter of 
her mangled face ; a scandalous device to 
overreach, a piece of foul practice repug- 
nant to all proper feeling ; more especially 
for such a distinguished Jago as Sally 
Green, so well able to take care of herself. 
But all this was nothing as affecting the 
odds. They ruled at three to one on Billy 
Leary, with few takers, and went to four 
to one before the fight began. 

Josh Perrott had been strictly sober for 
a full week. And the family had lived bet- 
ter, for he had brought meat home each 
H3 


A CHILD OF THEJAGO 


day. Now he sat indifferently at the win- 
dow of his room, and looked out at the 
crowd in Jago Court till such time as he 
might be wanted. He had not been out 
of the room that morning: he was saving 
his energy for Billy Leary. 

As for Dicky, he had scarce slept for ex- 
citement. For days he had enjoyed consid- 
eration among his fellows on account of this 
fight. Now he shook and quivered, and 
nothing relieved his agitation but violent ex- 
ertion. So he rushed down stairs a hundred 
times to see if the High Mob were coming, 
and back to report that they were not. At 
last he saw their overbearing checks, and 
tore upstairs, face before knees, with “ *Ere 
they are, father ! *Ere they are ! They *re 
cornin’ down the street, father ! ” and danced 
frenzied about the room and the landing. 

Presently Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook 
came, as seconds, to take Josh out, and 
then Dicky quieted a little externally, 
though he was bursting at the chest and 


44 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

throat, and his chin jolted his teeth to- 
gether uncontrollably. Josh dragged off 
his spotted coat and waistcoat and flung 
them on the bed, and was then helped out 
of his ill-mended blue shirt. He gave a 
hitch to his trousers-band, tightened his 
belt, and was ready. 

“ Ta-ta, ol* gal,” he said to his wife, 
with a grin ; “ back agin soon.” 

‘‘With a bob or two for ye,” added 
Kiddo Cook, grinning likewise. 

Hannah Perrott sat pale and wistful, 
with the baby on ber knees. Through 
the morning she had sat so, wretched and 
helpless, sometimes patting her face in her 
hands, sometimes breaking out hopeless- 
ly: — “ Do n’t. Josh, do n’t — good Gawd 
Josh, I wish you would n’t ! ’ or, “ Josh, 
Josh, I wish I was dead I” Josh had 
fought before, it was true, and more than 
once, but then she had learned of the mat- 
ter afterward. This preparation and long 
waiting were another thing. Once she 

HS 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

had even exclaimed that she would go 
with him — though she meant nothing. 

Now, as Josh went out at the door, she 
bent over Looey and hid her face again. 
“Good luck, father,” called Dicky, “Go 
it !” — though the words would hardly 
pass his throat, and he struggled to believe 
that he had no fear for his father. 

No sooner was the door shut than he 
rushed to the window, though Josh could 
not appear in Jago Court for three or four 
minutes yet. The sash-line was broken, 
and the window had been propped open 
with a stick. In his excitement Dicky 
dislodged the stick, and the sash came 
down on his head, but he scarce felt the 
blow, and readjusted the stick with trem- 
bling hands, regardless of the bruise rising 
under his hair. “Aincher goin’ to look, 
mother ?” he asked ; “ woncher ’old up 
Looey ?” 

But his mother would not look. As 
for Looey, she looked at nothing. She 

146 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

had been taken to the dispensary once 
again, and now lay drowsy and dull, with 
little more movement than a general shud- 
der and a twitching of the face at long in- 
tervals ; the little face itself was thinner 
and older than ever : horribly flea-bitten 
still, but bloodlessly pale. Mrs. Perrott 
had begun to think Looey was ailing for 
something ; thought it might be measles 
or whooping-cough coming, and com- 
plained that children were a continual 
worry. 

Dicky hung head and shoulders out of 
the window, clinging to the broken sill 
and scraping feverishly at the wall with 
his toes. 

Jago Court was fuller than ever. The 
tossing went on, though now with more 
haste, that most might be made of the 
remaining time. A scuffle still persisted 
in one corner. Some stood to gaze at the 
High Mob, who, to the number of eight 
or ten, stood in an exulted group over 
H7 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

against the back fences of New Jago 
Street; but the thickest knot was about 
Cocko HarnwelPs doorstep, whereon sat 
Billy Leary, his head just visible through 
the press about him, waiting to keep his 
appointment. 

Then a close group appeared at the 
archway, and pushed into the crowd, 
which made way at its touch, the dis- 
turbed tossers pocketing their coppers, 
but the others busily persisting, with no 
more than a glance aside between the 
spins. Josh Perrott’s cropped head and 
bare shoulders marked the centre of the 
group, and as it came, another group 
moved out from Cocko Harnwell’s door- 
step, with Billy Leary’s tall bulk shining 
pink and hairy in its midst. 

“ ’E’s in the Court, mother ! ” called 
Dicky, scraping faster with his toes. 

The High Mobsmen moved up toward 
the middle of the court, and some from the 
two groups spread and pushed back the 
148 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

crowd. Still half a dozen couples, remote 
by the walls, tossed and tossed faster than 
ever, moving this way and that as the 
crowd pressed. 

Now there was an irregular space of 
bare cobble stones and house refuse, five 
or six yards across, in the middle of Jago 
Court, and all round it the shouting crowd 
was packed tight, those at the back stand- 
ing on sills and hanging to fences. Every 
window was a clump of heads, and women 
yelled savagely or cheerily down and 
across. The two groups were merged in 
the press at each side of the square, Billy 
Leary and Josh Perrott in front of each, 
with his seconds. 

“ Naa, then, any more 'fore they begin?” 
bawled a High Mobsman, turning about 
among his fellows. “ Three to one on 
the big 'un — three to one I 'Ere, I'll 
give four — four to one on Leary ! Fourer 
one ! Fourer one ! '' 

But they shook their heads ; they would 


149 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

wait a little. Leary and Perrott stepped 
out. The last of the tossers stuffed away 
his coppers and sought for a hold on the 
fence. 

“ They "re a-sparrin", mother ! "" cried 
Dicky, pale and staring, elbows and legs 
a-work, till he was like to pitch out of 
window. From his mother there but 
jerked a whimpering sob, which he did 
not hear. 

The sparring was not long. There was 
little of subtlety in the milling of the 
Jago ; mostly no more than a rough appli- 
cation of the main hits and guards, with 
much rushing and ruffianing. What there 
was of condition in the two men was 
Josh’s : smaller and shorter, he had a cer- 
tain hard brownness of hide that Leary, in 
his heavy opulence of flesh, lacked, and 
there was a horny quality in his face and 
hands that reminded the company of his 
boast of invulnerability to anything milder 
than steel; also his breadth of chest was 
150 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

great. Nevertheless, all odds seemed 
against him, by reason of Billy Leary’s 
size, reach, and fighting record. 

The men rushed together, and Josh was 
forced back by weight. Leary’s great fists, 
left and right, shot into his face with 
smacking reports, but left no mark on the 
leathery skin, and Josh, fighting for the 
body, drove his knuckles into the other’s 
ribs with a force that jerked a thick grunt 
from Billy’s lips at each blow. 

There was a roar of shouts. “ Go it, 
father! Fa — ther I Fa — ther!”Dicky 
screamed from the window, till his voice 
broke in his throat and he coughed himself 
livid. The men were at holds, and sway- 
ing this way and that over the uneven 
stones. Blood ran copiously from Billy 
Leary’s nose over his mouth and chin, and, 
as they turned, Dicky saw his father spit 
away a tooth over Leary’s shoulder. They 
clipped and hauled to and fro, each striving 
to break the other’s foothold. Then Per- 
151 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

rott stumbled at a hole, lost his feet and 
went down, with Leary on top. 

Cheers and yells rent the air as each 
man was taken to his own side by his sec- 
onds. Dicky let go the sill and turned to 
his mother, wild of eye, breathless with 
broken chatter. 

“ Father *it ’im on the nose, mother, 
like that — *is ribs is goin’ black where 
father pasted ’em — ’e was out o* breath 
fust — there’s blood all over his face, 
mother — father would ’a’ chucked ’im 
over if ’e ’ad n’t tumbled in a ’ole — father 
’it ’im twice on the jore — ’e — O !” 

Dicky was back again on the sill, kick- 
ing and shouting, for time was called, and 
the two men rushed again into a tangled 
knot. But the close strife was short. 
Josh had but closed to spoil his man’s 
wind, and, leaving his head to take care of 
itself, stayed till he had driven left and 
right on the mark, and then got back. 
Leary came after him, gasping and blow- 
152 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ing already, and Josh feinted a lead and 
avoided, bringing Leary round on his heel 
and ofF again in chase. Once more Josh 
met him, drove at his ribs and got away out 
of reach. Leary’s wind was going fast, and 
his partisans howled savagely at Josh — 
perceiving his tactics — taunting him with 
running away, daring him to stand and 
fight. “ I ’ll take that four to one,” called 
a High Mobsman to him who had offered 
the odds in the beginning. “ I ’ll stand a 
quid on Perrott !” 

“ Not with me, you won’t,” the other 
answered. “ Evens, if you like.” 

“ Right. Done at evens, a quid.” 

Perrott, stung at length by the shouts 
from Leary’s corner, turned on Billy and 
met him at full dash. He was himself 
puffing by this, though much less than his 
adversary, and, at the cost of a heavy blow 
(which he took on his forehead), he visited 
Billy’s ribs once more. 

Both men were grunting and gasping 
153 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

now, and the sound of blows was as of 
the confused beating of carpets. Dicky, 
who had been afflicted to heart-burst by 
his father’s dodging and running, which he 
mistook for simple flight, now broke into 
excited speech once more : — 

“Father’s ’it ’im on the jore again — ’is 
eye ’s a bungin’ up — Go father^ bash 
'i-Ui-m! Father’s landin’ — ’im — *e.” 

Hannah Perrott crept to the window 
and looked. She saw the foul Jago mob, 
swaying and bellowing about the shifting 
edge of an open patch, in the midst whereof 
her husband and Billy Leary, bruised, 
bloody and gasping, fought and battered 
infuriately; and she crept back to the bed 
and bent her face on Looey’s unclean 
little frock; till a fit of tense shuddering 
took the child, and the mother looked up 
again. 

Without, the round ended. For a full 
minute the men took and gave knock for 
knock, and then Leary, wincing from 


154 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

another body-blow, swung his right des- 
perately on Perrott’s ear, and knocked him 
over. 

Exulting shouts rose from the Leary 
faction, and the blow struck Dicky’s heart 
still. But Josh was up almost before 
Kiddo Cook reached him, and Dicky saw 
a wide grin on his face as he came to his 
corner. The leathery toughness of the 
man, and the advantage it gave him, now 
grew apparent. He had endured to the 
full as much and as hard punching as had 
his foe — even more, and harder; once he 
had fallen on the broken cobble-stones 
with all Leary’s weight on him, and once 
he had been knocked down on them. But, 
except for the sweat that ran over his face 
and down his back, and for a missing front 
tooth and the lip it had cut, he showed 
little sign of the struggle ; while Leary’s 
left eye was a mere slit in a black wen, 
his nose was a beaten mass, which had 
ensanguined him (and indeed Josh) from 
155 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

crown to waist, and his chest and flanks 
were a mottle of bruises. 

“Father ’s awright, mother — I see ’im 
laughin’. An’ ’e ’s smashed Leary’s nose 
all over ’is face !” 

Up again they sprang for the next round, 
Perrott active and daring, Leary cautious 
and a trifle stiff. Josh rushed in and struck 
at the tender ribs once more, took two 
blows callously on his head, and sent his 
left at the nose, with a smack as of a flail 
on water With that Leary rushed like a 
bull, and Josh was driven and battered 
back, for the moment without response. 
But he ducked and slipped away and came 
again, fresh and vicious. And now it was 
seen that Perrott’s toughness of hand was 
lasting. Leary’s knuckles were raw, cut, 
and flayed, and took little good by the 
shock when they met the other’s stubborn 
muzzle; while Josh still flung in his 
corneous fists, hard and lasting as a bag 
of bullets. 

156 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

But suddenly, stooping to reach the 
mark once more, Josh’s foot turned on a 
projecting stone, and he floundered for- 
ward into Billy’s arms. Like a flash his 
neck was clipped in the big man’s left arm 
— Josh Perrott was in chancery. Quick 
and hard Leary pounded the imprisoned 
head, while Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook 
danced distracted and dismayed, and the 
crowd whooped and yelled. 

Dicky hung delirious over the sill, and 
shrieked he knew not what. He saw his 
father fighting hard at the back and ribs 
with both hands, and Leary hammering 
his face in a way to make pulp of an ordi- 
nary mazzard. Then suddenly Josh Per- 
rott’s right hand shot up from behind, over 
Leary’s shoulder, and gripped him at the 
chin. Slowly, with tightened muscles, he 
forced his man back over his bent knee, 
Leary clinging and swaying, but impotent 
to struggle. Then with an extra wrench 
from Josh, up came Leary’s feet from the 

157 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

ground, higher, higher, till suddenly Josh 
flung him heavily over, heels up, and 
dropped on him vv^ith all his weight. 

The Ranns roared again. Josh was up 
in a moment, sitting on Kiddo Cook’s 
knee, and taking a drink from a bottle. 
Billy Leary lay like a man fallen from a 
housetop. His seconds turned him on 
his back and dragged him to his corner. 
There he lay limp and senseless, and there 
was a cut at the back of his head. 

The High Mobsman who held the 
watch waited for half a minute and then 
called “ Time !” Josh Perrott stood up, 
but Billy Leary was knocked out of know- 
ledge, and heard not. He was beaten. 

Josh Perrott was involved in a howling, 
dancing crowd, and was pushed, grinning, 
this way and that, slapped on the back, 
and offered drinks. In the outskirts the 
tossers, inveterate, pulled out their pence 
and resumed their game. 

Dicky spun about, laughing, flushed, 
158 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

and elated, and as soon as the door was 
distinct to his dazzled sight, he ran off 
downstairs. His mother, relieved and 
even pleased, speculated as to what 
money the thing might bring. She put 
the baby on the bed, and looked from the 
window. , 

Josh, in the crowd, shouted and beck- 
oned her, pointing and tapping his bare 
shoulder. He wanted his clothes. She 
gathered together the shirt, the coat, and 
the waistcoat, and hurried downstairs. 
Looey could come to no harm lying on 
the bed for a few minutes. And, indeed, 
Hannah Perrott felt that she would be a 
person of distinction in the crowd, and 
was not sorry to have an excuse for going 
out. 

“ Three cheers for the missis ! ” sang 
out Kiddo Cook as she came through the 
press. “ I said ’e’d *ave a bob or two for 
you, did n’t I ? ” 

Josh Perrott, indeed, was rich — a cap- 


159 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 


italist of five pounds. For a sovereign a 
side had been put up, and his backer had 
put on a sovereign for him at three to one. 
So that now it became him to stand beer 
to many sympathizers. Also, he felt that 
the missis should have some part in the 
celebration, for was it not her injury that 
he had avenged on Sally Green’s brother? 
So Hannah Perrott, pleased but timorous, 
was hauled away with the rest to Mother 
Gapp’s. 

Here she sat by Josh’s side for an hour. 
Once or twice she thought of Looey, but 
with native inertness she let the thought 
slip. Perhaps Dicky would be back, and 
at any rate it was hard if she must not 
take half an hour’s relaxation once in a 
way. At last came Dicky, urgent per- 
plexity in his face, looking in at the door. 
Josh, minded to be generous all round, felt 
for a penny. 

Mother,” said Dicky, plucking at her 
arm, “ Pigeony Poll’s at ’ome, nussin* 
160 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Looey ; she told me to tell you to come 
at once.” 

Pigeony Poll ? What right had she in 
the room ? The ghost of Hannah Per- 
rott’s respectability rose in resentment. 
She supposed she must go. She arose, 
mystified, and went, with Dicky at her 
skirts. 

Pigeony Poll sat by the window with 
the baby in her arms, and pale misgiving 
in her dull face. “I — I come in, Mrs. 
Perrott, mum,” she said, with a hush in 
her thick voice, “ I come in ’cos I see you 
goin’ out, an* I thought^ the baby *d be 
alone. She — she*s 'ad a sort *o fit — all 
stiff an* blue in the face an’ grindin* ’er 
little mouth. She ’s left awf now — but I 
— I dunno wot to make of ’er. She ’s 
so — so — ” 

Hannah Perrott stared blankly, and lifted 
the child, whose arm dropped and hung. 
The wizen age had gone from Looey’s 
face, and the lids were down on the strained 

i6x 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

eyes; her pale lips lay eased of the old 
pinching — even parted in a smile. For 
she looked in the face of the angel that 
plays with the dead children. 

Hannah Perrott’s chin fell. “ Lor,” she 
said bemusedly, and sat on the bed. 

An odd croaking noise broke in jerks 
from Pigeony Poll as she crept from the 
room, with her face bowed in the bend of 
her arm, like a weeping schoolboy. ^ Dicky 
stared, confounded 

Josh came and gazed stupidly, with 
his mouth open, walking tiptoe. But at 
a word from Kiddo Cook, who came in 
his tracks, he snatched the little body and 
clattered off to the dispensary, to knock up 
the young student. 

The rumour went in the Jago that Josh 
Perrott was in double luck. For here was 
insurance money without a doubt. But in 
truth that was a thing the Perrotts had 
neglected. 


162 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 


* ★ 5|e ♦ * * 

Hannah Perrott felt a listless relief ; 
Josh felt nothing in particular, except that 
there was no other thing to be done, and 
that Mother Gapp’s would be a cheerful 
place to finish the day in, and keep up the 
missis’s pecker. 

So that eight o’clock that evening at 
Perrott’s witnessed a darkening room 
wherein an inconsiderable little corpse 
lay on a bed ; while a small ragamuffin 
spread upon it with outstretched arms, 
exhausted with sobbing, a soak of muddy 
tears : — ‘‘ O Looey, Looey ! Can ’t you 
’ear? Won’t you never come to me no 
more ? ” 

And the Reverend Henry Sturt, walk- 
ing from church through Luck Row toward 
his lodgings in Kingsland Road, heard 
shouts and riot behind the grimy panes 
of Mother Gapp’s, and in the midst the 
roar of many voices joined in the Jago 
chant : 


163 


A CHILD OF THE JAGO 

Six hloomirC long months in a prison^ 

Six more bloomin^ months I must stay^ 
For meeM a bloke in our alley 
An' takin' -is ticker away / 

Toora-li — toora-il — looral^ 
TooraAi — toora- li — lay^ 
A~coshin' a bloke in our alley^ 
An' taking 'is uxter away ! 



164 



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